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HUNTING FOR A. FOUR-LEAVED CLOVEK. 



WILD FLOWERS 



AND 



WHERE THEY GROW 



BY 



AMANDA B. HARRIS 
Author of " Field, Wood and Meadow Rambles." Etc., Etc 







SIXTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY MISS L. B. HUMPHREY 



BOSTON 
D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY 

32 franklin street 






Copyright. 1SS2, 
Bv D. Lothrop and Company 



Presswork bv Rockwell & Churchill. 



CONTENTS 



WILD FLOWERS OF SPRING 
The Caprices of Flowers 
Trailing Arbutus . 
The Ground Nuts . 
Hepaticas 
Trilliums 

The Spring Beauty 
Plebeians 

Spice Bush and Cassandra 
White Things 
Fruity Flowers 
The Wayfaring Tree . 

WILD FLOWERS OF SUMMER. 

Violets, Dandelions, Cowslips and Buttercups 
Squaw-Plants and Purple Avens 

"What Ye Got Now?" 

The Dog's-Tooth Violet and Red Columbine . 
Jack-in-the-pulpit ....... 

5 



15 
21 
27 
28 
3i 
34 
38 
40 
42 

49 
5o 



55 
60 



73 

78 



Contents. 



The Pasture . 

Lizards . 

In the Swamp 

The Norway Fixes 

The Med ola . 

Lixx.ea . 

We circumnavigate the Pasture 

The white Bird-ox-the-wixg 

The Lady's-slipper 

The "Land-lilies" 

" Over t' the Poxd " 

The Pitcher Plaxts 

WILD FLOWERS OF AUTUMN. 

The Cardixal's Flower 
Ox the Islaxd 
Aloxg the Railroad 
Ixdiax Pipe . . . . 
Goldex Days . 
Wild Places . 
Witch Hazel . 



7S 
84 
86 

93 

96 

99 
100 

103 
104 
108 
112 
116 



123 
129 
138 
143 
143 
151 
156 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The weather-worn Homestead 

"May I go?" 

The old Barn ...... 

The Lane the Cows came up 

The Swamp-Catkins, like Caterpillars 

Those very pink and very fragrant Ones 

Right in the Midst of the first Clearing 

A Pilgrim Daughter 

Flower-hunters 

The Rule of Three 

Spring-beauties 

A Line of Willows a Mile off 

Plebeians . 

Folks, or Flowers ? . 

They bloom so lavishly . 

The wilding Apple-tree . 

" Wayfaring Tree ! ' 

Jack-in-the-pulpit 

In the Time of Violets . 



13 

15 
15 

19 

22 
24 

25 
30 
3i 
33 
35 
38 
40 

43 
47 
5i 
55 
57 



8 



Illustrations. 



with 



Columbines 



A Svmbol in Gold and Green 
" Only Greens " 
" Do you love Butter ? " . 
" What ye got now ? " 
Where the Ground was Red 
The Eglantine 
Blue Flag 

•• My Son's Wife Elizabeth " 
The fringed Orchis 
Partridge-berry 
Medola .... 
Princes Pine . 
Meadow Rue . 

We investigated with reference to 
Linnaea ..... 
Pasture Lilies— a sumptuous Sheaf 
Canada Lilies — on stately Stems 
"Over f the Pond" 
Silence broods there 
Pond Lilies .... 
Away in from travelled Ways 
A Pitcher-plant Family . 
The wild Azalia 
The Polygala and the Rhodora 
Where some black Millpond comes into the Pai 
A blue-and-white Ginger-pot of Daisies 
our Toes fastened in a Crack 



the Cucumbers 



norama 



61 

63 
65 
71 
75 
81 

84 

*7 

90 

91 
95 
95 
95 

97 
101 
105 
109 
in 
"3 
114 
iif 
116 
119 
121 

i-5 
124 

i-5 



Illustrations. 



9 



But the Bank was steep 

Up the River .... 

Home by Water instead of Land 

On the Island .... 

The Place of wild Grape-vines 

Bringing Home great Loads of it 

Clematis and Dodder 

Sacred to Golden-rod 

Wild Places 

In the wild and windy Twilight 

That old gullied Road . 

" Tired almost to Death 

(i Of the Queen Osmunda named " 

Being in Arcadia 

Witch Hazel . . , . 

At the Pasture Bars 



127 

123 

129 
130 
131 

135 
139 

H5 
H7 
149 

153 
155 
156 

157 
158 

160 




Si 




THE WEATHER-WORN HOMESTEAD. 



WILD FLOWERS OF SPRING. 



T^\ID you ever see a man or woman who was willing to forget 
^^^ the farm life they once knew and had a part in ? The 
weather-worn homestead, the rambling barns and sheds — so 
many of them — with those dark corners and passage-ways, 
and stalls and pens for the cattle, and those haymows and 
lofts, the irregular garden, half given over to neglect, where 
hop-vines and currant-bushes, fruit-trees and vegetables, divided 
possession with the old-fashioned flowers our grandmothers 
took such pleasure in ! The well, and the spring that fed it, 
the mossy stones over which those living waters went plashing 
and dancing ! The apple-orchard ; lovely acres of turf and 
trees ; the home fields where the Indian corn grew, and in 
June the clover bloomed ; the far-off meadow where the hay 



14 



WILD FLOWERS. 



was cut in August ; the pasture, and the lane where the cows 
came up at night ! 

And did any one ever forget the wild flowers, and the places 

where thev grew ? 

*. <_ 

That means being nurtured in mother Nature's open ways, 
and knowing the wild, unpeopled places, the sweet solitudes. 

the breezy uplands. It means Sat- 
urday half -holidays — going a-May- 
ing, going up the river, wading, fol- 
lowing a brook, going off into the 
woods. It means a great deal of 
asking, "May I go?" — somewhere. 
To us it meant expeditions to 
fields and pastures new. and a gen- 
eral exploring of wild regions, and 
a search for things that are diffi- 
cult of access. We were not dis- 
obedient or vagrant, but adventurous 
and full of enthusiasm ; and there 
was nothing; we were afraid of ; 
nothing that we did not dare to do. 
It meant also certain spots where 
certain flowers were sure to be, for 
they or their kind had been there from our first remem- 
brance. And there they are to this day, years and years after. 




MAY I GO ? 



THE CAPRICES OF FLOWERS. 



15 



Duly as the time set for them in the order of the universe 
comes round, there 
they bloom, as if 
they had a part in 
the life that is im- 
mortal. 

Wonderful per- 
sistence of a thing 
which seems so 
transient that you 
may count upon 




finding; it in the 
selfsame spot for thirty 
It may be a trite 
thing to say, but it is none 
the less a matter worth 
thinking about, that when 
the lane the cows came up. much that was thought per- 

manent has perished, and a place once familiar is altered and 




16 ""1- Fi: 17. 

strange, one can go to the old haunts and find the flowers he 
used to be fond of. 

In the history of a company of Hognenots who settled on 

the southern frontier of Massachusetts, it is said that eurrant- 

:~; '__ ■::.':.-'.. "-.:. - :_: :_ej i;,: :ir^ ^ : :..tH 

[1 is about the same with some species of wild flowers where 
the land has not been disturbed by the plough. They refuse 
to be disinherited. And the loving earth takes solicitous care 
of them. I know a field which has been submerged by freshets, 
fed down and trampled upon by cattle, and put to every test 
;: .":;--:;_-_-_■. ^ :■: ::_.-.-:~:~t tI:t::"_^:.'. ::~g :ir r:o:s :: :-:i::t: 
plants; but there ever7 spring are little plats of houstonias. 
They never fail- I expect to see their sweet faces there as 
L: _ - I "_: ---. 

The pinkest and most fragrant May-flowers I evei- saw,, 
used to grow in the same place for I know not how many years. 
I could go to it blindfolded. Some red pasture lilies have sur- 
vived a generation of human beings; and where scarlet colum- 
bines were to be seen as long ago as I can remember, scarlet 
columbines are growing to-day. 

There is another fact more remarkable, which is that wild 



THE CAPRICES OF FLOWERS. \>j 

flowers will not grow where there is every reason that they should. 

Colonel Higginson says, " The longer one lives, the less rigid 
appear the rules and forms of external Nature ; she seems to 
bid her wild flowers bloom where she will, and almost when 
she will, and to delight in setting at naught the most careful 
assertions of the botanists." 

The moral of which is, that though one ought to study books 
closely, it is always best also to use one's own eyes. 

He had been among the White Mountains, where he found 
flowers altogether out of season, and " meadow plants at an 
elevation of four thousand feet." And any one may have anal- 
ogous experiences without going so far from home. The truth 
is, that wild flowers surprise us in many ways. Their times 
are like the movable feasts in the calendar, and there is no 
philosophizing about it. No rule of cause and effect will apply 
in some cases. 

Topographically, how inconsistent they are ! For example, we 
are too far north for the autumnal dandelion and the succory. 
Yet, if my eyes did not deceive me, I saw in August last year 
the very dandelion in blossom on the top of a mountain ; and 
on the same day, a small company of the blue, beautiful succory 
flowers — two wanderers from " down country," whose seeds had 
either floated hither on the wind, or what is more likely, been 
brought by some migrating bird. 

There are certain limits, beyond which, without apparent 



iS WILD FLOWERS. 

reason, the wild roses do not stray. It is the same with the 
blood-root ; if we want the pure white flowers with their wealth 
of golden stamens, we must cultivate them. Lupines are abun- 
dant in a pasture I know some miles from here, in no essential 
differing from our own ; but not a curving spike of the violet- 
colored blossom adorns greensward of ours. 

I know the locality of one, and only one, patch of bearberry, 
and one of the wax-wood, or climbing staff-tree, or, as it is 
oftener called, "bitter-sweet." The latter keeps close to a 
hollow by the side of the railroad, and is scorched every few 
years in the attempt to burn out the shrubbery which is inclined 
to encroach on that highway of the locomotive. At last, being 
warned, it has wandered under a fence, and by winding and 
clambering, as its way is, has managed to lose itself in some 
scrasgy trees till the orange berries betray it in autumn. 

Another rarity is the mountain laurel or broad-leaved kalmia, 
the clamoun of the Indians. " Calico-bush " is another name, 
and "spoon-wood," which, with the ingenuity characteristic of 
some people, has been made over so that it would not know itself 
into spoon-hunch. This laurel is a native of mountain regions, 
as may be inferred, and may be found all the way from Canada 
to Florida, from Maine to Ohio. Why, then, does not it grow 
plentifully for us? Mr. Emerson, in his book on the trees and 
shrubs of Massachusetts, speaks of a pasture where it makes 
such islets of bloom "crowned with white or rose-colored 




THE SWAMP. —CATKINS, I.IKE CATERPILLARS. 



TRAILING ARBUTUS. 21 

flowers," that it is a sight " worth going out of one's way to 
see. 

It is a shrub which has roving kind of roots, yet it keeps 
pretty much to the same area in this one spot, when there is 
nothing in the loose soil to hinder its spreading. The question 
is, how came it just there, instead of being in any other sandy 
ground beside the road ? And being there, the next question 
is, why does not it run along into the adjacent territory ? Why 
should not there be laurel in all similar places as well ? 

TRAILING ARBUTUS. 

This darling of the spring is notoriously and provokingly 
uncertain in what botanists call its habitats, There are sec- 
tions of country where it is not to be found, and where it 
cannot be made to live ; and the curious part is, that there 
seems no reason for its likes and dislikes, for to all human 
appearance the conditions are about the same where it is 
and where it is not. It is not on account of dryness or 
dampness, sunshine or the lack of it, that it perishes. The 
thing is perverse. It will thrive, if it chooses, on a sterile 
knoll by some country road, or in a dark nook under the 
roots of a tree in a swamp. 

Those very pink and very fragrant ones before referred to, 
inhabit the sunny side of a rock in a starved old pasture. 



22 



WILD FLOWERS. 






where there are not two inches' depth of soil for their 
roots. The leaves suffer from this sterility, and are dwarfed 
and rusty ; but how intense, like a burning blush, is the 
rose-red of the clusters, and how spicily sweet they are ! As 
if by some subtile processes known only in the alchemy of 
nature, such as bring the gold to the Indian-corn ears on 

the hillsides of New England, the 
senseless stone draws to itself, and 
imparts to the flowers, which adorn 
it, strength, beauty, sweet- 
ness and the flush 
of the morning;. 
Another place 
where it comes 
,,_-'- early, and is one 
of the flower land- 
marks, is by the 
border of a sled- 
path that has for 
a score and more 
of years been kept 
passable through 
a wooded swamp, 
— the swamp of 
these papers. Long ago, two or three trees were cut down 





THOSE VERY I'INIv AND VERY FEAGliANT ONES. 



TRAILING ARBUTUS. 23 

just there, to furnish material for bridging over a wet spot, 
whose chances for letting a yoke of oxen clown past extrica- 
tion were, to say the least, rather threatening. 

The opening thus made gave opportunity for the sun to 
shine in on a few feet of ground ; consequently the snow 
went on the earliest thawing days ; and there, if we could 
reach it through the slush and lingering drifts, we were sure 
of a handful of the first May-flowers. By that time there 
were maples in bloom, outlining themselves like trees on 
fire ; and many willows and poplars were hanging out their 
catkins, like caterpillars, like tufts of gray wool, like soft, 
furry pussies, or, all in golden green, dropping dust of gold. 

Those were white, perhaps on account of the soil and 
location. And so were the later ones of the swamp, which 
came on when " going a-Maying " had become one of the 
by-gones with everybody but ourselves. We used to pick 
them almost as late as June, growing out in sight above the 
leaves, in conspicuous trusses of snowy bloom almost as large 
as verbenas. 

But after all, the true situation is, doubtless, just where 
Professor Gray says it is — in sandy woods in the shade of 
pines. Some such conditions must have been those on that 
Plymouth shore fronting the east, where our pilgrim fathers 
and mothers landed. Right in the midst of the first clearing 
where the two lines of log houses were built, was a spring, 



^4 



WILD FLOWERS. 



bubbling up fresh and clear, from which the women clipped 
up water for household use. If yon go to Plymouth now. 
and pass along Leyden street and up the hill, somebody will 
point out the spot. 

The pine forest lay to the right and left, and stretched away 
behind the settlement in leagues of wilderness, full of perils 
from wild beast and murderous Indian. But around the cabins 

there were warm, sunny spaces : and 
there, as tradition runs, the women 
found flowers — trailing arbutus, the 
May-flowers. 

They were the first to greet the 
exiles after that dreary winter. Was 
it not some compensation for the 
primroses and hyacinths under the 
hedgerows in dear, old England ! It 
is pleasant to think of this bit of 
beauty in their lives. I know 
those women must have put them 
in some quaint mug or pitcher 
of Delft, and set them where the 
humble room could be made 
pleasanter for their sweetness and bloom. Perhaps the pil- 
grim daughters ventured to fix the clusters in their hair, as 
girls do now. or wear them on their bosoms. Let us hope 




RIGHT IX THE MIDST OF THE FIE-T 
CLEARING. 




A PILGRIM DAUGHTER 



THE GROUND-NUTS. 27 

so. No strictness of training or objection to personal adorn- 
ment could overcome a woman's love of flowers. 

And sure we may be that the tenderly tinted, sweet-lipped 
arbutus blossomed on Rose Standish's grave, made so soon 
among the knolls where the hill slopes to the sea. 

THE GROUND-NUTS. 

Close by that sunny nook in the swamp were knolls, crowded 
with the pretty things that flourish in rich leaf-mould. There 
was a little of every thing, like the evergreen blackberry vine, 
partridge-berry and checkerberry ; all in unfading green, coming 
out fresh, moist and glossy from their chill bath of melted 
snow. And all the sod was shot through and through with 
goldthread. You could not turn up a morsel of it without 
laying bare those shining threads. 

And there were little hummocks full of ground-nuts. Not 
the genuine ones flavored like cocoanut, but of an humbler 
sort. Very good, however, we young people thought them, 
and by no means to be disparaged now that we have grown older. 

We had traditions about them, and traditions have always 
a fascination. We had read, in narratives about Indians, how 
some of the captives who made their escape, wandered back 
from Canada through the wilderness to their home in Mass- 
achusetts, u subsisting upon ground-nuts." And so these were 



WILD FLOWERS. 

the nuts ! And who knew but the route lay along this very 
way down to the valley of the Merrimack ? — a suggestion 
that always thrilled ns with the real " Indian story " thrill 
and made us look cautiously around. 

And then how long could a famishing person live on ground- 
nuts no bigger than these ? Above all. if it was so hard to 
cret at them when the ground was bare, how could it have been 
done when the snow was deep ? for it was always in the dead 
of winter that those events occurred. We had to work so 
hard for the dingy little tubers, bedded away clown deep in 
the chocolate-colored mould at the end of a slim white stem : 
and when we thought we were sure of them, behold ! the 
stem breaking off just at the critical moment, leaving behind. 
or below, to be dug for., the part good to eat. 

In after years we were told that our ground-nut was properly 
the dwarf ginseng. Its flowers often came about the last of 
April, in constellations of tiny stars or graceful bunches of 
fine white points above a branchy circle of dull green leaves 
which were so sensitive that they were apt to wilt into rags 
if they were handled. 

1IEPATICAS. 

1 shall never forget my first hepaticas and spring-beau- 
ties ; no more than I shall that glorified hillside, under 



HEPATIC AS. 29 

the blazing mid-day sun, I first saw growing, and gathered 
dog's-tooth violets. 

I should be sorry if I were not capable of enthusiasm, 
over such beautiful things. It was to each of our flower- 
hunter's admiration and love without scientific knowledge. But 
there was ecstasy in the search and the finding. Our whole 
hearts were in it ; and the feeling, the eagerness, the zest, 
we mutually shared. 

Those special hepaticas were in a piece of woods to which 
everybody resorted who went Maying ; because there, on a 
few acres of poor soil sprinkled over with reindeer moss, 
the arbutus grew in an almost inexhaustible quantity. 

The hepaticas were discovered in a remote part, out of the 
way of the marauders ; and their very inconspicuousness was 
the means of their preservation. They were in all the known 
colors — white, lavender, pink, and that blue which is like 
the blue of a baby's eye. All which we afterwards came to 
know about were out in open ground, and were white or pale 
blue. Only these, which never saw the sun, had such colors. 
They were in a dismal corner hanging to the north, as if 
exiled, shut away, kept by themselves. But something about 
the spot must have suited them ; perhaps the bed of warm 
pine needles against which nestled the pretty cups full to the 
brim of tremulous stamens tipped with buff. 

After the brief little life of the blossom was over, the leaves 




had their day of love- 
liness. They started 
out immediately in 
mouse-color ; and in 
their tender state were 
soft as fur of such 
small wild creatures as 
squirrel or mole. The 
leaf of this 
liverwort," as old farm- 
ers call it, is one of 
the many which come 
under a rule of three. 
There are the tri-parted, 
tri-pinnated, tri-foliated, 



TRILLIUMS. 



3i 



and I know not how many forms of the trio arrangement. 
In this case they are lobes, whence its name, liver-leaf, 
from a fancied resemblance to that organ of the body. 



TRILLIUMS. 



There are some well-known laws of odd numbers in nature. 
Botanists have found that all flowers are based upon a plan, 
and that, " next 
to five, the most 
common number is 
three." And there 
is infinite variety 
about those threes 
and fives and sev- 
ens. 

Of all the threes, 
the goldthread with 
its lustrous yellow 
green leaves, and 
the trailer we call 
dewberry vine, or 
perhaps more prop- 
erly the swamp blackberry, with its equally lustrous ones 
in purple green, are the most elegant. 




THE RULE OF THREE. 



32 WILD FLOWERS. 

Both are evergreens. You can always find them. I have 
often wondered that artists and designers should pass by 
such as these, to copy some exotic, like ivy or a fuschia. Our 
woods are full of most beautiful forms, in variety enough to sat- 
isfy the most exacting. 

The goldthread leaf has a shape which deserves to be called 
" aesthetic." It is simply and exquisitely perfect in its curving 
outlines, its finish of fine notches, its gloss as if it had been 
varnished, and the way in which it is set on its stately little 
stem. After the petals have dropped off, the thread of a flower 
stalk may be seen for weeks lifting as high as it can the small 
frame- work which is left ; precisely as one would carry aloft 
some emblem or transparency as he marched in a gala-day 
procession. I always think too of the cresset at the end of a 
pole which watchmen in the very olden time used to bear 
about to light the streets with. 

The smiling wake-robin, or painted trillium, was an annual 
delight to us. That piece of cool green woods belonging to 
the swamp, which we haunted from the going of the snow 
till it came again, was full of it. In the distance, each solitary 
flower on its tall stem looked like a snow-white three-pointed 
star. It was only when one came near to it that the purple 
pencillings showed at the base of the petals. 

The dark trillium, bath-flower, three-leaved night-shade, birth- 
root - - it has all these names, and more — comes later, is coarse 



TRILLIUMS. 33 

and rank, has immense, almost diamond-shaped leaves, smells 
ill, and has a strange color. Old-fashioned people in the coun- 
try call it " squaw-flower ; " and looking at it — a great over- 
grown, swarthy thing, in that peculiar sombre red, set oh 2 with 
the bone- white stamens, like barbaric ornaments — I can see 
a kind of rude fitness in the name. Others, with no reason 
that one can make out, call it " the Benjamin." These col- 
loquial names for flowers are sometimes unaccountable, often 
absurd, but occasionally very pretty and appropriate. More or 
less of them will come to mind as the procession of the seasons 
moves along. 

In an ancient country there would probably be some legend 
associated with these trilliums ; for in the colored lines of one 
species there are those who would see a likeness to blood ; while 
as for the other, it is most thoroughly ensanguined, an ominous 
red, of dye as deep as that gory spot on the hand of Lady 
Macbeth, which would not u out." 



... . •.-•-'- '<Z>?'/"'"-'"Vm,<; V „„ 




SPRING-BEAUTIES. 



54 WILD FLOWERS. 

THE SPBINOBEAUTY. 

The first trees within sight from our house to show signs of 
spring are a line of willows a mile off. All at once, on some 
morning of a sunny April day, there is a faint tinge of what the 
old story-writers call " gosling green ; " and that callow tint 
means that there will soon be wild flowers on a bit of meadow 
sheltered by those same willows. It is an early spot : a coppice 
of oak and other trees protects it on the north ; the iron track 
of the railroad and an embankment, curve around the lower 
side where the sun shines all day ; and at the west are those 
fantastic trunks and a hedge-row — a real hedge-row — which 
makes one think of England. 

It is a famous covert for birds. When they make the mis- 
take, which they often do, of arriving from the South too soon, 
they are sure to wait in that comfortable nook until it is time 
to see about building their nests. 

And that is the earliest place to find a few of the first spring 
flowers, such as meadow-rue. houstonia, whid-anemone and 
violets. But I speak of it particularly on account of the spring- 
beauty. Somebody has described this dainty thing as " com- 
posed mostly of water," and as being " little more than a 
colored shadow." But that shadow is very pink, and distract- 
ingly pretty. If you look at it with a microscope, you will see 
that it is made of pink hair-lines on a ground of faint pink. 



THE SPRING-BEAUTY. 37 

and dots of pink on almost invisible stamens — little bits of 
color, and minute proportions ; but making a shape and flower 
presence incomparably lovely. 

It is said that those pencilled lines on the petals are " honey 
guides for insects." But what a diminutive insect it must 
be, and what an infinitesimal morsel of honey that could be 
stored in a nectary which is such a mere speck of itself ! 

It certainly is the smallest spring-beauty that ever was seen. 
And all its parts are so fragile looking, its outlines so delicate 1 
As a flower it is not so winsome as the Linnsea ; but there is 
a character of unsubstantiality about the whole plant ; the leaf 
and stem are almost as bodiless as the blossom. The perfec- 
tion in every part, the completeness, the matchless finish, are 
what make it so unique. And then the suppleness, the very 
air of it, so blithe and debonair ! that is what one can never 
too much admire. The stalk looks hardly stout enough to bear 
its own weight, but it supports the two slim green leaves, the 
tiny green vase which holds the flower, and a whole cluster 
of buds on their threads of stems. And there it sways, like 
a child on the spring and all a-tiptoe to be gone. 

How natural it is to associate flowers with human beings, 
or to liken them to some one we know ! I am sure you must 
have seen many a dear old grandmother in a much-ruffled 
night-cap, who made you think of a hollyhock. There are 
faces with such broad, beaming good-will in them, they are 



38 



WILD FLOWERS. 



so round and so cheery, that they seem to have the day's 
briohtness in them, like the sunflower. Is not the arbutus 
like the sweetest maidenhood, like Shakespeare's Miranda ? 
And is not the white lily like some noble woman you honor ? 
And what are sweet-peas but a flock of little school-girls with 
their cape-bonnets on ? 




It was down there that we used to find the " Dutchman's 
breeches," a poor relation of the stately, blue-blooded Dicentra 
spectabilis, or bleeding-heart. The little Dutchman long since 
disappeared, nor have we ever since been able to get on his 
track. But though not of high rank, his oddity was really 
a charm ; and if one but examined the attire, which seemed 
dingy at a distance, it was found to be white, tipped with 
cream-color. The stuff was genuine. 

There is no flower without beauty of some kind to one who 
has eyes to behold it. If not in general effect, in outline or 



PLEBEIANS. 39 

color, then in delicacy of tissue, perhaps, or peculiar arrange- 
ment of stamens and pistils, the form of the calyx, or the 
seeds ; something to be admired, like the mutilated dead clog 
of Oriental fable, in whom the crowd could see nothing to 
praise until there came along one who said, " Behold ! his teeth 
are whiter than pearls." 

If there are any plebeians in the vegetable world — and did 
not Linnaeus speak of the grasses in that way ? — we can find 
them by the side of the highway, and under foot in our door- 
yards. We might call the little speedwells so. Everybody 
knows these simple, lowly plants, with the very small spikes 
of blue and white flowers, and the tiny, thyme-like leaves. 
They live contented lives, and do all they can with their 
frugal resources to make waste places attractive. And the 
poor mallows, with its numerous family, and little " cheeses," 
would come into the list. Is there any one who does not 
know, and who has not eaten, those slippery, meaty " cheeses " ? 
Perhaps the cheerful cinque-foil, blossoming anywhere and 
everywhere, a brave, bright yellow disc like a tiny sun-face, 
from June till almost November, may be a plebeians. Perhaps, 
too, the rabbit' s-foot clover, soft, furry, daintily tinted, but too 
common and in colors too obscure. But certainly the poverty- 
stricken tribe of mouse-ear everlastings ; probably not one 
person in a hundred who walks over them ever notices these 
jolly paupers, unless it is in a general way, in early spring, 



40 



WILD FLOWERS. 



when their woolly heads, specked with purple, give a faint 
tino-e to the worn-out pastures and sterile fields which they 
inhabit. When every thing is so bare and so gray, before the 
grass has started, they assert their personality, though it takes 
a host of them to do it. Then they show 
that they are of some use in the world, 
where, if any thing has gained a right to 
be, they surely have ; for they look as if 
they had been in it ever since the 
creation. There never was any 
thing more distinctive about any 
plants than is the case with these 
ing cheap things ; they look as 
hills ; they might 
eval with Father 
There is a common 
suitable, of "pussy's 
the cushion-like divi- 




class of 
unassum- 
old as the 
have been co 
Time himself, 
name, quite 
foot," from 



FOLKS, OK FLOWEBS ? 



sions before the flower expands ; and a local one, not so easily 
accounted for, of " ladies'-tobacco." 



SPICE-BUSH AND CASSANDRA. 



After May has fairly come, and days begin to grow longer 
and warmer, how fast the flowers press along ! One must go 






SPICE-BUSH AND CASSANDRA. 41 

often to their haunts, or something will have bloomed and 
passed away. We had been many times to the swamp where 
it grows, before we ever saw the fever-bush in blossom. And 
then we did not recognize it till we had bitten the aromatic 
bark, and tasted the pungent flavor, which gives it its other 
names of spice wood and benzoin — making one think of the 
Orient, and the Old Testament days when caravans went 
laden with odoriferous things whereof incense for the temples 
was made. It has another name of wild allspice, and is also 
known as " Benjamin-bush." We could not find out the origin 
of this last. Somebody ought to hunt up the plant-lore of New 
England, and see where some of our quaint names came from. 

The flourishing little benzoin is gay with honey-yellow 
flowers before the leaves are formed ; and they tassel out so 
liberally along the branches that the bush looks, as you see 
it amidst its gray surroundings, as if it were done in gilt. 
Thoreau speaks of a u lit tree : " this is a " lit " bush, glinting 
as it might if the sunshine touched it while every thing else 
was left in the shade. 

For years we failed of seeing the cassandra, or leather- 
leaf, in bloom. It is one of the andromeda family, and comes 
on late in April, or early in May, when the small, egg-shaped, 
white flowers appear in a row, like lilies-of-the-valley, along 
the rusty leaves. They are slightly fragrant, and as pretty as 
they can be. They are so young and the bush so hoary, that 



42 WILD FLOWERS. 

it is like the contrast of a child's face with one in old 
age. 

WHITE THINGS. 

While one stays away, how wonderful the transformation 
that takes place ! The flowers are so many ! They bloom so 
lavishly, in such affluence, such prodigal bounty, such spend- 
thrift waste ! 

And not only in frequented places, but where people never 
go. In swamps inaccessible ; deep in the passes of the silent 
hills. In forests which only wild creatures traverse ; under 
the shadow of lonely mountains. The hermit thrush, the foxes 
and the eagle, know their secret haunts. 

Sufficient in Nature's bounteous goodness, they grow up in 
quietness and freedom to fulfil their lives in content. They 
are a part of the earth's garniture of beauty. They are 
the darlings she cherishes. They have waited long down 
in darkness under the snow which has housed them in 
warmth and security ; but now nothing can keep them 
back. 

They come from their secluded cells, and are for the most 
part like pale nuns. Many of the earliest of the New England 
wild flowers (and it is central New England, or a little to 
the north of it, where this is written) are almost vestal in 




THEY BLOOM SO LAVISHLY. 



WHITE THINGS. 45 

their purity. They have a chilliness of aspect compared with 
the fervid dyes of regions further south. 

But what they lack in color is more than made up by 
the ineffable delicacy of the tints and shadings, the exquisite 
shapes, and the endless diversity in stamens and pistils. 

And then the aroma of our arbutus — what can surpass 
it ? And the fine fragrance of the later Linnsea, and the 
balsam of the partridge-berry? Each one of these has a 
perfume as distinctively its own as tuberose or jasmine, while 
it is subtler, more delicate, and never oppressive. The sweet 
odor of the early New England wild flowers belongs with 
the crystalline blueness of the spring sky and the freshness 
of dewy mornings, when it seems as if the world had but 
just been newly made, and it is such a joy to be alive and 
have a part in it. 

How many kinds of white there are! One might run over 
every thing that can be thought of in comparison, and there 
would be found a flower to match it. White as milk, as 
snow, as ivory. The whiteness of a pearl, of silver, or of 
white wax, or of wool, or swan's down, or a boll of cotton 
as it is bursting open and showing its fleecy fibre. 

If one could group all the spring flowers together tha£ are 
called white, no two would prove to be of exactly the same 
shade or quality. The petals of the goldthread are of 
creamy richness. The smiling wake-robin has a bluish cast. 



WILD FLOWERS 

The mitre wort is like frosted silver. The cassandra is opaque 
and waxen. The chick winter-green whose pretty star spangles 
the earth, is of immaculate purity. The hobble-hush is 
white, the chokeberry roseate. The bell-worts are tinted like 
a tuberose. The dwarf cornel (bunchberrr) has a tingr :: 
palest sea-green; the small white violet is pearl color. 
Trailing arbutus is of the purest flesh tones, like the clear, 
fair complexion of a sweet joung girl, just flushed like the 
petals of a damask rose : and the wood anemone is suffused 
with a blush that seems to go and come with every motion. 
till the wind has wrought its ruin, and nothing reman:- :: 
its evanescent beauty except the stamens with their do:- : 
yellow and the trim green pistil down in their mil: 

The "bluets" have, as the word denotes, a hue : zure. 
Not many are the flowe:- sc favored with names as this 
golden-eyed darling of the pastures and fields. In botanical 
nomenclature, it is Ho- to honor Dr. Hou she : 

an English botanist, and because it is of such heavenly blue 
when it open-. TTith the Philadelphians it is " Quaker- 
bonne: — they could think of nothing else sc and so 
bewitching to call it by. Again it is " V^mis-pride." and 
rf-pink." It is "innocence," for reasons that need no 
comment-. And finally, it is " fairy flax." fit for elfin spin- 
g and dam:: -ric for the queen of the fairies to 

IT. 




THE WILDING APPLE-TREE. 



FR UITY FLO WERS. 49 

FRUITY FLOWERS. 

All the berry and fruit-bearing vines, bushes, brambles and 
trees put on white or roseate white in their blooming, as if 
there were no other color known. What rule is it that 
governs them ? What is the chemical agency which works in 
the sap of a raspberry spray, a white-thorn, a strawberry 
vine and an apple-tree, that they should have this in com- 
mon ? 

The very shape of the blossom looks fruity. Nearly all, 
with the exception of the blueberry, have petals that shed, 
and a generous supply of stamens, promising of bountiful 
results. 

How profuse, too, the inflorescence ! There comes a time, 
just as June is crowding close on May, when the whole 
country over it is like fairy-land. Orchards are coming into 
bloom, and the wilderness and waste places are made glad. 
In neglected corners of fields, along railroad-tracks, on the 
sides of old worn-out pastures, and where new growths have 
sprung up since a piece of cleared land has been burned 
over, it is just the same — there is largess of bloom and 
leafery. 

Who ever suspected until then, who would have believed, 
that there were so many wilding apple-trees ? Those snowy 
drifts in barren spots are only the poor thorn-trees, the 



5o 



WILD FLOWERS. 



white thorn, the scarlet fruited thorn; in spring such a white 
wonder; in October, transfigured again, till it is all one 
burning red with the mealy pear-shaped fruit, which stays on 
amidst the sharp-set environment when not a leaf is left. 

All the rest of the fleecy, feathery loveliness is wrought by 
the despised wild-cherry trees, of the kind which bears the 
small, acid, red fruit so tempting to children and birds. 
There is nothing too delicate, too graceful, too snowy-pure, 
to compare them with. They have the airiness of plumes. 
Thev look soft as foam. They appear ready to float off as 
clouds do, or mist. 

THE WAYFARING TREE. 

To the early spring belongs the showiest shrub of northern 
woods, the hobble-bush, or ••wayfaring tree," so called, perhaps, 
from a vagrant habit it has of spreading its lithe, withy 
branches off till they touch the ground, where they strike 
root, and then start on again. It is a sort of traveller to 
a limited extent : perpetuating itself, as a banian does, though 
not after the banian model. If the writer who asks the 
question, 

"Wayfaring tree! what ancient claim 
Hast thou to that right pleasant name?" 




S^ijyg^ gggjilBBII^gESBSUBWS^^g^^^S 



4ife " '^& 



' WAYFARING TREE ! WHAT ANCIENT CLAIM 
HAST THOU TO THAT RIGHT PLEASANT NAME ? : 



THE WAYFARING TREE. 53 

had lifted one of these reaching arms, he would have found 
the answer. But he must have been right in saying that 
a poet gave it : 

"Whate'er it be, I love it well; 

A name, methinks, that surely fell 
From poet, in some evening dell, 

Wandering with fancies sweet." 

It is in every sense a wonder-bush. First, the flowers start 
magnificently, in immense flat cymes. If I should say that 
they covered a space as large as a dinner-plate, it would not 
be so very extravagant, such an outrageous exaggeration. 
Many of the component parts, the small ivory-white wheels, 
fail of perfecting themselves ; but the general effect is grand 
in spite of it. Those plats of white make great moony spots 
in the green dimness and distance ; and seen at dusk of 
evening, they have a weird phantom pallor, quite startlingly 
suggestive of ghostly faces. 

Then the leaves sometimes measure six or eight inches 
across, are handsome in form, corded, and till autumn comes, of 
a most brilliant green. When they turn — what alchemy in 
their juices ! — they glow with the deepest, richest, winiest 
red. The woods seem warmer for the very sight of them. 

Meanwhile, there have been berries, in large clusters as 



54 



WILD FLOWERS. 



conspicuous as the flowers were ; their color a blackish 
crimson, and their shape like apples, with just such a stem 
and shrunken calyx as apples have. They look like little 
Baldwin apples massed in a generous bunch, as many as 
your hand can hold. And the question every one asks, seeing 
them all along the mountain-roads in August and September, 
is, " Are they good to eat ? " 

The answer we heard an old woman make, was, " They 
were good to eat when I was a child." 



WILD FLOWERS OF SUMMER. 




F 



'LOWER hunt- 
ers quite un- 
consciously go by 
calendars of their 
own, wholly inde- 
pendent of legiti- 
mate almanac-makers ; and if they 
were to put their modes of reckon- 
ing into tangible shape, the times and 
seasons would be marked off by tokens 
astonishing to Poor Richard and his 
kind. 

Violets, dandelions, cowslips and but- 
tercups stood for those last days of 
May, and the long, beautiful, blue, 
perfect first days of June. I stop to con- 
fess a sin against the violet — how could 
there be a flower so lovely, and fragrance 
be left out ? It is unpardonable ; and, as 
Fanny Kemble declared when she flung one away in a rage, 



JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT. 



56 WILD FLOWERS. 

" The thing's totally unnatural." Delicate yellow ones, blues 
of so many varieties, sizes and shades, and all so generous 
with their beaut}, so contented hi every place ; and so 
admired — and the one crowning grace and charm is not there. 

All the sweetness of our violet tribe, which is so numerous 
that the earth is blue by reason of it. both the dry land 
and the wet, is in the little white one, with the fine streaks 
of purple and heart of gold. Bonny wee thing clown in 
the wet ! What a dearling it is, so sweet, and shy, and pure ! 
I would rather give all the others up, heavenly blue and 
all. than that this least anions; them should not be. 

Has any one, I wonder, ever classed and enumerated the 
blues of violets ? I am sure it must have taken all the words 
that ever represent blue. They are sapphire, azure, cerulean. 
They are turquoise, they are amethystine. They are like the 
blue ether ; like blue precious stones ; like eyes of blue. 
They pale into lavender ; they darken to purple. We knew 
of a place where there were varieties in sky-blue with purple 
streaks ; in deep violet striped with a lighter tint ; in palest 
blue, with heavy shadings ; and some that lacked but little 
of being red. 

It was on a meadow where we used to go after cowslips, 
as we and everybody called them, though marsh-marigold is 
the correct name. At that time of the year a brook slipped 
alons; the "run" which was midway of that bit of lowland. 



>- VIOLETS, DANDELIONS, COWSLIPS, BUTTERCUPS. 59 

By mid-snmmer it was all dried up, but at the season of so 
many flowers, we had to go over shoes in the clear, cold 
water to get at those cups of shining gold. What a vision 
of the new summer those almost dazzling " runs " and mead- 
ows were, when the cowslips, and after them the dandelions 
and buttercups, were out ! A symphony, as modern artists 
would say, in gold and green ! Oh, those superb long bright 
afternoons, when we saw acres of emerald-green meadow, set 
as thick as stars are in the sky, with dandelions and butter- 
cups ; blazing with sunshine, as if they had caught some- 
thing of his glory in their cups and discs ! 

It was as if the spoils of an Alexander or Caesar had 
been spilled where they marched on their home-coming from 
some victorious campaign ; or as if some lavish hand had 
scattered, broadcast, coin of the realm. 

But the good dames whom we sometimes saw out gather- 
ing the " cowslops" as they would have it, saw only in these 
auriferous balls something for the dinner-pot. To us they 
were riches and glory ; to them, only " greens." 

The word cowslip, we were informed, was from the Saxon 
cuslippa, because cows delight in them, and from a likeness to 
the lips of a cow ; but the last seems without sense. There is 
an old name of " blay-blobs," and " blow-blobs." "Blay" may 
by some elasticity be made to stand for a wet place ; and " blob " 
is a bladder. The flower, and also the bud, being so round, 



60 WILD FLOWERS. 

there is significance in it. Another quaint, half-obsolete name 
is " mare-blob," from the Saxon " mere" a marsh. The Anglo- 
Saxons were apt to give idiomatic definitions to things. There 
is a crispness, vigor, precision and directness in their words. 
They may not go "trippingly on the tongue,'' they may not 
be musical to the ear ; but they are forceful and to the pur- 
pose. 

SQUAW-PLANTS AND PURPLE AVENS. 

I have sometimes wondered if all the young folks used to 
do just those same things we did — if they too played at 
curling dandelion stems into rings ; holding buttercups under 
one another's chins, i; to see if you love butter ;" pulling 
clover-heads to pieces for the sip of hone}' down in the 
purple nectaries ; striking rose-leaves against their foreheads, 
to hear the popping sound as the petals burst ; making 
baskets of burdocks ; picking open pansies, to see the old 
woman who sits inside washing her feet 

All these things, as with mutual understanding, I suppose 
they did And did they not make chains of bulrushes; and 
daisy chains ; and pick out the savory seeds from the heads 
of that dear New England bush, the sweet fern ? And did 
they not hunt for four-leaved clovers ( older folks do 
that ! ), from some belief, transmitted as mysteriouslv as 




A SYMBOL IN GOLD AND 
GHEEN. 



SOU A W-PLANTS AND PURPLE A VPNS. 



63 



Free Masonry, that good luck will come with the finding ? 
And did they not make thistle-balls and festoons of oak 
leaves ? And what country child is there who does not know 
by actual proof what a pleasant acid the tender beech-leaves 
have ? And was there ever one among 
them who has not been off in / 



early summer after 
"young ivory ?" 

I used to think 
that such an unac- 
countable name for 
checkerberry. Why 
was it " ivory," un- 
less from the stupid, 
blundering misnomer 
of some ignorant per- 
son ? And, after all. 



to leain that 



ivory 




ONEY GREEN 



plum" (for a plain 
enough reason) was an accredited name, as much so as 
" wintergreen," " box berry," "partridge-berry" or "mountain 
tea" — all of which belong to the spicy, glossy-leaved, familiar 
favorite of our childhood. 

With us as small folks, and then as growing up (for these 
papers represent many years of rambling), the love amounted 



6a WILD FLOWERS. 

to a passion — perhaps I have said that before. Nothing in 
the shape of a flower failed of some attraction for us, with the 
one exception of that odious abomination of the smilax family 
known as the ••carrion-flower.'* Even that Ave brought home 
as an anomaly among plants, and then rejected it in disgust. 

Nothing grew in too tangled or muddy or dangerous a place 
to deter us from getting it. "We went down into ditches after 
the little lavender-colored speedwell, and dared malevolent pois- 
ons to pluck the small-flowered crowfoot, and those gorgeous 
chrysanthemum-like clusters which we learned to know as the 
golden ragwort, or " squaw-weed." 

The squaws, let me say. have been well perpetuated in the 
floral world ; in a flower, a weed, a root and a berry ; namely, 
the dark trillium (before mentioned); this golden blossom, 
the partridge-berry (JlitcJiella). and one of the odd parasites 
of the broom rape kind. And very likely there are many 
more that are named for the dusky women of the wigwams. 
I must not omit the cohosh, which keeps up the memory of 
the Indian baby as " pappoose-root.'' 

Two of the most barbaric things were the purple avens and 
the swamp saxifrage. The first is a flower within a flower, 
with red. hairy, pointed petals, or sepals, or members of some 
sort, like the ears of a fawn : then a cream-colored cup ; then 
more surroundings and hooked things ; and inside of all. a 
bundle of green fibres tipped with gold. And what is true 




DO YOU LOVE BUTTER? 



SQUA W-PLANTS AND PURPLE A VENS. 67 

calyx, or what flower part, no one but a botanist can tell. 
It stays like this for a long time, changing at last to a cone; 
and when the seed arrangements have matured, it is a bristling 
purple ball. 

The avens is not handsome, but singular, rich, outlandish, 
complex. Red leaves, red flowers, red stems, even the under- 
ground parts are that same tawny red, as if the very sap in 
its veins was drenched in color. It is said that the roots 
taste of clove. 

Of course we dug down to ascertain. I am reluctant to 
say that one of our number was ready to taste of almost 
anything ; wisely refraining, however, when it came to Jack- 
in-the-pulpit, which has a bulbous root of the kind called a 
" conn," so like a certain garden esculent that it has another 
name of u bog onion." Being warned that whoever bit into 
this fierce burning " dragon-root " would wish more and more 
that they had not, we let it alone. 

In our pursuit of knowledge, we dragged to light the tur- 
nip at the end of the painted trillium ; and we solved the 
mystery of the Solomon's seals, and saw the sign of that 
monarch's imprint on the horizontal roots. 

The swamp saxifrage, which grew where the avens did, is 
even more bizarre when put to a microscopic test. Seen, 
thus, it might pass for a specimen of Japanese high art ; or 
the head of a Japanese lady, dressed after the similitude of 



68 WILD FLOWERS. 

a cushion, set off with knots of ribbon and stuck full of red- 
headed pins. It is considered a very homely species, but 
under a magnifying glass it is ornate as an Eastern pagoda. 
There is a wonderful amount of filigree work, carving, small 
samples of fine sculpture, pretty models and dainty devices 
on a miniature scale in flower mechanism, if one will just 
take the trouble to examine. 

" WHAT YE GOT XOW ? " 

The farmers who saw us " forever lugging home a lot of 
stuff " used to look at us admiringly, on account of our 
indefatigable perseverance ; and they thought we were of 
the " right sort," though what was it " good for," they'd 
like to know. One man used to call out " Weeds ! weeds ! 
And you are all burnt up ! " 

Another would come out of his house, and, stooping down 
over our baskets to see what the contents were, ask, his 
face brimming over with curiosity and kindliness, u What ye 
got xow?" 

Some of the people thought we must be getting things 
" to make beer of," or were gathering " greens." And one 
old man stopped us and told us what everything we had 
was " good for." We should never have rheumatism if we 
ate this. That was q;ooc1 for fever. If we followed his 



" WHAT YE GOT NOW?" 69 

•v 

directions we should be saved from all ills. He was as 
wise as the " Indian doctors " whom the country places used 
to know. He talked about the flower called " high pride," 
and the smaller which was " low pride/' and showed us 
what " cohosh " was, and " wickabee " — Indian names. 

If we heard of a new plant (that is, new to us), we set 
out in search of it. And, depend upon it, if you are deter- 
mined to find a thing, you will. It was often our chief 
perplexity to ascertain what the name was. Sometimes, in 
our inquiries, we would stumble upon some vernacular that 
was curious or pretty. For instance, sarsaparilla was petti- 
morrel; clintonia was "heal-all;" lacly's-slipper was "Noah's 
ark. 

Usually, however, we received for answer, " Oh, that is 
some kind of a river weed." " TJiat, that is brook greens''' 
One man scrutinized a flower we showed him, and then an- 
swered, as one having authority, " That is a plant which 
has no name ; " and we feigned satisfaction. 

" The name ! the name ! " was what we harped upon, as 
Shylock did upon "the bond." We partly analyzed and 
partly guessed; groped in the dark, made many blunders, 
and often were very, very wide of the truth; eventually 
coming slowly to that little, absurdly " little learning " which 
is such an unsatisfying thing. 

But guessing is not knowing. Resemblance does not nee- 



7 o WILD FLOWERS. 

essarily prove anything in botany. How good and how com- 
fortable certainty is ! 

We had at last a helper in a born botanist. True, he 
was sixty miles off ; but the " weeds " went in the mail- 
bag, with an interrogation point after the name if we were 
slightly hi doubt, an exclamation point if we were very 
much so. And they came back labelled aright. And those 
were days of mutual congratulation, when we could put our 
fingers on something and say we had learned a fact. It 
was not much, but yet a great deal to us, that the little 
we knew — we hiew. or trusted we did. 

It was an event when we found the tall anemone, and 
ascertained which was the bulbous crowfoot ; and that the 
thinly rayed flower as common as dandelions was the dais}^ 
flea-bane. A little creeper by the wayside, which has so 
fine a stem and leaf, and tiny lavender-red cup, was the 
spurry sandwort. We had fondly believed in it as a pim- 
pernel. We had so declared it ; for did it not open at 
seven o'clock in the morning, and close by half-past two ? 
And on cloudy days did it not stay shut? And if that did 
not answer to the description of Ci poor man's weather-glass," 
then what did ? 

No doubt these details seem absurd, and quite too personal ; 
but they were red-letter days to us, illuminated days on 
which they happened. Such was that on which we brought 




WHAT YE GOT NOW? 



THE DOCS-TOOTH VIOLET AND RED COLUMBINE. 73 

home the "golden Alexanders" (what an imperial sound! — 
meadow-parsnips, if you wish for a more commonplace name), 
and knew that these corymbs of intensest yellow, shedding 
powder of gold over our hands, were really lawfully entitled 
to that exalted appellation. Such was that when we saw 
our first white saxifrage on the ledge; and when, after much 
vain searching, but holding to our faith that they must be 
somewhere, if we only knew, we found the primrose-colored 
violets. 

THE DOG'S-TOOTH VIOLET AND BED COLUMBINE. 

We went a long distance to see the dog's-tooth violets, under 
a blazing noon-day sun in June. They are due in May; but 
these were when days are long and hot. We had had a large 
bunch sent to us — sixty by count — with word that we should 
find them in such a place, that they shut up towards night, 
but about eleven in the forenoon would be wide open. 

Yes ; there they were : the whole lower portion of a bluff, 
sloping to the east, by a meadow, was lighted with them. I 
could not have imagined such glory possible to the flower. 

But it is no more a violet than a tulip is, or a rose. The 
root is a bulb ; very, very deep in the earth. From it rises 
one smooth stem, bearing a pair of handsomely mottled, long, 
lanceolate-elliptical leaves, shining on the under side, and on 



74 WILD FLOWERS. 

the upper of a mealy green blotched with purple. Above there 
is the one flower, a spreading yellow lily, veined with brown, 
and supposed to bear at the base marks as if a dog had bitten 
a piece out — whence the name. Another which it is known 
by is adder's tongue. 

We were sometimes fortunate enough, as in this case, to see 
certain of the short-lived flowers in masses. Once it was the 
clintonia, which is another of the always graceful lily shapes. 
It is very common in the cool moist woods, where its silvery- 
lined clean green leaves, of the form of the lily-of-the-valley, 
are always noticeable. The flowers are in a profuse cluster, 
buff and delicate. One day in June we saw so many of them 
on a piece of low land that they made patches of color varie- 
gating the green as if pale sunlight were touching it here and 
there. 

And we knew a pasture hollow, divided by an old board 
fence, where the ground was red with columbines. All in scar- 
let and yellow, on their branchy stems, how they nodded and 
swayed in the gay June breeze ! 

I shut my eyes and see again that rocky hollow, with the 
hedge-crowded fence where a thrush was building her nest ; 
the banks silvered with mitrewort just beginning to fade ; the 
cnshions of moss ; the clustering maiden-hair fern ; and the 
dashing red of the columbines. 

They bloomed on and on, as if their resources were without 




WHERE THE GROUND WAS RED WITH COI.UMRINES. 



J A CK-IN- THE-P ULPIT. 77 

limit ; and time and again we took the long tramp to look at 
them, just as we would go to see a friend. And always we 
ended by bringing home our arms full — for nobody else cared 
for them — and roots to set out in the garden. 

JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT . 

They had for a neighbor in the ravine back of them, a 
Jack-in-the-pulpit, who had either strayed away from his own 
people, or been left behind. In later years the number in- 
creased, but at first there was only one. The ravine, which 
was the bed of a spring water course, grew up to bushes, was 
partially cleared of them and grew up again; but through all 
these vicissitudes, Jack never failed. We went every summer 
to hunt him up, and there was a real zest in doing it. 

It is a piece of floral necromancy which brings him up> out 
of the ground to his perch : who could foretell it, not know- 
ing ? A starchy turnip down out of sight, so biting in its 
fiery juice that it has the name of dragon-root ; a pair of 
coarse tri-foliate leaves with an ensheathed something between 
them bound tight as a mummy. Watch these closely. The 
next thing — lo ! our old acquaintance, Jack ! He has been 
evolved out of — what ? But any way, there he is " peart " 
and eager, up on the stool from which he can just see over 
the screen in front of him. His head is sheltered by the 



y8 WILD FLOWERS. 

leaf which looks so like the sounding-board above the pulpit in 
some very old-fashioned meeting-houses. It is a rather overpow- 
ering canopy, in stripes of greenish- white alternating with red- 
bronze, bright and shining ; but, like everything else about 
him, it is worth looking at. 

By and by, in place of his stool will be a heap of some- 
thing like little white stones, like a cairn. It is his cairn — 
all that there is above ground to show where he stood. 
Some day in September, in your strolls up the ravine, you 
will come across a cone of scarlet berries. They hold the 
juice and the vigor of the dragon-root. 

But the idyl of his life is over, finished. Jack, his desk 
and his sounding-board, have long since vanished. Yet he 
held his post faithfully, this little preacher. Many a day, 
while the flowers of spring were fading, he stood on his 
high place where he could look off and see all that was 
going on — green things growing, mists gathering on the hills, 
birds making their nests, the sun rising and setting, and 
children driving home the cows at night. 

THE PASTURE. 

The place we had most to do with was " The pasture." 
To account for our love for it, I must begin at the 
beginning. 



THE PASTURE. 79 

Some men are never satisfied till they own a piece of land. 
They may be so situated that they have no use for it, and 
they may have to make some sacrifice to obtain it, yet the desire 
is too strong for them. They are not easy until they have a 
field, or a pasture, or what New Englanders call a " lot," of 
some kind, some " real estate " that is their own. 

And a right good feeling it is, whether in man or woman ; 
a natural, true instinct for our dear old mother earth, for 
outward life, for the trees and grass that will grow for you, 
for the wild flowers and the birds that will make your small 
portion of the globe their home. And they will all help to 
your purest pleasures, and become a part of your own being. 

When the world was new, the dwellers therein loved the 
soil. These whom I am speaking of are their lineal descend- 
ants in more senses than one ; and so the yearning which 
overmasters them can be accounted for. 

For such a reason the pasture (as if there was but one) 
was of great interest to us. It was called an " old " one when 
we first knew it ; and it had traditions. An almost forgotten 
settler had owned it, together with two fields in which he had 
set out apple-trees — building in one a house, not a trace of 
which now appears except the depression in the turf where 
the cellar was. 

The pasture bordered on the road for a few rods only, and 
all the rest extended in a rambling way back of the fields, 



So WILD FLOWERS. 

and off: till it met the tracts of other proprietors. So much 
of it was growing up to wood that it was called timber-land, 
leaving open spaces enough, however, for two cows to get a 
living there. It had groves of oaks, maples, pines, and large 
solitary trees, which no axe was allowed to touch — left to 
stretch their broad arms and furnish a generous shade such 
as cattle seek when the sun is hot. 

It had knolls fragrant with sweet fern ; its surface was 
broken by boulders, bossed with gray-green lichens. Here and 
there out of the short grass showed ledges, whose fissures 
were adorned with mosses in helmet and hood of scarlet ; and 
around their warm basses ripened the largest checkerberries, 
and sometimes a few bunches of strawberries, of flavor most 
delectable — the condensed aroma of strawberry was in them. 

No monotony in that pasture, with its ups and downs, its 
slopes and hollows. It was sterile in some parts, luxuriant 
in others ; open, shaded, dry, wet ; a warm wood at the east, 
and a cold one at the north ; home of many wild flowers. 

And there was one exotic, a sweet briar — the eglantine of 
the poets. It was like a bit of romance to see it there ; to 
touch the leaves and make them give out that bewitching 
fragrance ; and each June to gather the lovely single roses, 
whose perfume is the purest attar, and whose petals are so 
deftly tipped and tinted with carmine. How it came there no 
one knew ; but we liked to think that the young wife of the 



Zp£ ... 




EGLANTINE. 



THE PASTURE. 83 

settler had brought a slip from her home in the old colony, 
and set it out in the clearing in the wilderness. 

The pasture had several small bogs where were bulrushes 
and flags, and the sphagnum moss was so rank that you sank 
into it ankle deep. Yellow water lilies grew in two of them, 
and button-balls, and the cotton-grass, whose airy tufts caused 
the places to look in September as if a flurry of snow had 
fallen. It had reedy pools between little grassy hummocks 
skirted with hardhack, and there bloomed the exquisite flowers 
of the blue flag. And there was a lovely, cool green hollow, 
which had a season of special beauty when the crimson whorls 
of the sheep-laurel ("lamb-kill") made it like a rosy festival 
time. 

A grassy road wound from the pasture bars, by many a 
turn, away down to the swamp from whence the winter 
supply of wood was drawn. Always under the shade of trees 
and through pleasant places went this sled-path, bordered by 
berry-spotted banks and knobs of gray granite cushioned with 
moss. 

Following it, or going a little away from it, one could 
always find abundance of flowers. The blue-eyed grass grew 
in. it, the silvery cinque foil, violets and dwarf -evening prim- 
rose, wild strawberries, and three kinds of everlasting, the 
small purple milk-wort, the blue lobelia such as the Indians 
are said to have used for tobacco, gold-thread and fringed 



84 



WILD FLOWERS. 




poly gala, dwarf cornel and star wort. 
arbutus and the least Solomon's seal, 
and many more. 

LIZARDS. 

At the north lay the great un- 
drained area fed by hidden springs, which 
was the home of so many water-loving 
and shade-loving things. For trees, the 
canoe birch, the yellow and the black 
(which has the glossy bark so aromatic, 
which children, and older folks too, like 
to nibble ), scarlet maple, different species of poplar, ash and 
willows, hemlocks, spruces, hornbeams, and I know not what. 



BLn;-rLA(> 



LIZARDS. 85 

made in summer a darkling shade. At other times of the 
year it was open enough and sunny in patches. 

It was secluded, but to us never lonesome. We haunted 
it at all seasons except when winter snows made it impene- 
trable ; even then we followed the sled-path. We loved it 
as the solitude-seeking thrushes did, whose notes of thrilling 
sweetness we used to hear towards the close of clay. It was 
there that we found our one oven bird's nest, and the nest 
of the hermit thrush. 

And we had two experiences not so agreeable. The swamp 
was carpeted with lush mosses of many kinds. Besides the 
tufted sphagnum which grew right in the water, the feathery 
moss of satin sheen on the dryer hummocks, the dark pickle- 
green sort such as we see on the stones that surround a well, 
and the little tree shapes like a date-palm, there was a great 
deal of a lovely variety outlined like a fern and delicate as 
lace, in an exquisitely filmy tissue of fibres. 

This last grew in great mats so closely woven that we 
could bring away, without breaking it apart, all we could 
pile on our arms, taking it up and rolling it together like 
a rug. Unfortunately for us, these snug beds afforded a 
retreat for lizards. Now lizards are secretive ; and, naturally 
enough, they kept concealed till we had reached home and 
began to pull apart the moss to arrange it in trays. Then, 
oh, horror ! out slid the slippery, stealthy, olive-green crea- 



S6 WILD FLOWERS. 

tures and went gliding about the rooms up-stairs and down 
till the j fairly pervaded the house. 

Another time — it really seems as if we ought to have 
been suppressed — we brought home ** newts," as people call 
them, in the same way. If it was not the truth, I should not 
tell such a thing — it was almost as bad as Frank Bucklancl. 
with the frogs and snakes in his pockets. Yes, there they 
were — the little orange-red lizards, which John Burroughs 
says are salamanders ; and he declares that they are harm- 
less. But think of our disgust and dismay when, on unload- 
ing our mosses (this time in the dooryarcl). they came 
forth, and went — somewhere ; where, we did not wait to 
see. 

IX THE SWAMP. 

Between the knolls in the dryer places were flowering sedges 
and wild grasses. Who could say but the melic and the 
galingale of Jean Ingelow and Tennyson were there ? For 
what but a sweet grass with a honeyed name was the 
" melic " of that meadow where the high tide came in on 
that awful night when " My son's wife Elizabeth," walked 
there, calling " Cusha ! Cusha ! " till the waters came ? 
And galingale is only a sedge, with flowers like heads of 
grain. But poets have such a way to charm, that they 




MY SON'S WIFE ELIZABETH." 



IN THE SWAMP, 89 

lift the most familiar thing out of the common-place into 
the realm of the romantic and ideal. 

It was there we found a bed of the checkered rattlesnake 
plaintain, which people put into their ferneries, naming it 
adder's tongue. And there we used to search diligently for 
the herb which old women call " chocolate-root." The earthy 
flavored beverage made from it we had been permitted to 
taste, but the whereabouts of the thing itself has always 
been a myth. It was not by any means from a desire to 
become better acquainted with this beverage, but from a 
keen delight in seeking. 

There were beautiful and singular things enough in and 
around there to satisfy anybody. I have spoken of some of 
the flowers which came early — those white and daintily 
tinted ones. The ground was fairly starred with them. 
Every bank was sprinkled with dwarf cornel and the fragile 
blossoms of the gold-thread ; the two-leaved Solomon's seal 
was as thick as if the earth had been sown with it. 

In one spot there was a winsome and very sensitive species 
of oxalis, wood sorrel ; in another there were some curious 
green orchids. There were green dragons, kinsmen to Jack- 
in-the-pulpit ; there was the tiarella on the water's edge, 
with the glister as of hoar frost on its bishop's caps ; there 
were spring beauties, swamp saxifrage, meadow rue ; and 
in midsummer there was one purple fringed orchis — that 



9 o 



WILD FLOWERS. 



refined, pale, most exquisite flower which seems the consum- 
mate result of greenhouse culture, yet unfolds its spiral of 

finely-cut petals and sheds its luscious 
sweetness in a place so remote, so seem- 
ingly unfit for it. What could have pos- 
sessed the Dorsetshire people that in their 
folk-lore they should name it giddy- 
gander ? 

The flowering shrubs, either in the 
swamp or bordering on it. were numer- 
ous, and all except the spice-bush were 
in white, and the ground was clad 
in immortal green by reason of the 
Canada yew. or ground hemlock, as it 
is sometimes called. How beautiful was 
the heavy fringe along the prostrate 
branches, and what a gem of beauty 
the wax-like scarlet berry in which was 
bedded such a meaty little nut \ And 
there was the greatest abundance of the 
creeping snowberry. or chiogones. which 
is otherwise known as the mountain 
partridge-berry, and by herb-gatherers who find it good for 
some ailment, " French ivy." Could any thing be more 
absurd ? What a lovely thing it is ! Known only to cool, 




THE FUDGED ORCHIS. 




PAIlTIilDGE-liElLFvY, 



THE NOR IVA Y PINES. 93 

northern woods, where the soil is damp, or as it is intro- 
duced into botanical gardens and hotnouses, but comparatively 
few persons have ever seen it in its perfection. 

But in that swamp it was at home ; creeping over the old 
logs and stumps, and making the daintiest of carpets with 
its brown, thread-like vines on which were closely set those 
tiny, ovate, glossy, aromatic leaves. Its mite of a flower 
comes on the under side, and after it the most minute and 
the prettiest berry in the world, looking like a drop of white 
wax, and tasting of checkerberry. 

THE NORWAY PINES. 

The swamp ended at the north, and was lost in a vague 
no-man's-land of alder thickets on one side, and delicious 
woods on the other, through which the sled-road kept on 
and on, and the same wild vines and flowers, the ferns 
and ground-pines were contained. In spring and summer it 
was delightful to be there. In autumn, when the blue jays 
were calling among the trees, and acorns dropped on our 
heads, and now and then we started up a partridge, and 
squirrels scampered across the floor of fallen leaves, and the 
great spaces were lighted up by a glory of wine-red, where 
the sun touched the hobble-bushes — ah ! there are no words 
to tell what rapture that was ! 



94 WILD FLOWERS. 

On the west were the " Norway pines." a pleasant wood- 
land of those stately evergreens, intermixed with oak and 
maple, of few acres only, hanging towards the swamp ; but 
it had many a little dent and basin, many a bank on the 
side where it descended to the wet ground. In the hollows 
which always held moisture, were choicest beds of mitchella. 
It is a yine which reyels in dampness, and is happiest 
where the snow has longest lain. There the leaves are rank, 
there is the deepest flush on the balsam-breathing, starry 
flowers, and the most flaming scarlet on the plumpest of 
berries. 

There were the lily -bells of the straw-flower, known as 
wild oats, and the larger one of the same genus, which has 
the twisted name of perfoliate, from a worse twist there is 
about the setting of the green leaves, which are wound 
about the stem, and there transfixed by it in a fashion as 
difficult as it is to all appearance needless. There was 
pipsissiway, or prince's pine, with its shining thick leaves, 
and in June the reddish- white fragrant flowers. We used 
to call it •'toothache root" and ^'rheumatism weed" — I 
suppose from some old woman's notion. Then there was the 
beautiful sort of first cousin to it, the pyrola (or pear win- 
tergreen, from the likeness of the leaves to those of a 
young pear-tree), specified as rotundifol(u and which has a 
spike of such delicious flowers. Their fragrance is finer than 



THE NOR WA Y PINES. 



95 



hyacinth, and the hue of the crimped 
waxen cups is creamy as tuberose ; 
and when it is pressed and put 
away in a herbarium, it changes to 
the richest burnt brown. 

Besides that, there 
was another of the 
same tribe, with fewer 
cups, and not quite 




so pretty. There 

were also five kinds of 

what we sometimes called 



groum 



and some 



times " club moss." When we came to these, 
things were a good deal mixed. We were greatly 



96 WILD FLOWERS. 

in doubt. One was like cords of chenille : one grew stiff 
and bristling clear into the water : one was like a Lil- 
iputian evergreen tree, standing solitary ; one was the gen- 
uine ••'festoon ground-pine."' of which Christmas garlands are 
made : and the fifth was like the green skeleton of it, a 
mere outline. 

THE MEDEOLA. 

This was the Indian cucumber-root. We were accustomed 
to see it in all similar woods, growing up from a bed of last 
year's dry oak leaves. After we had learned the name, we 
did not rest until we had investigated with reference to the 
cucumber, and found it even so — a small, white, juicy, clean 
and very whole some-looking root, enough like the edible it 
was named for, to be wholly satisfactory. The flower is a 
little greenish-white lily, with petals curving backward: and 
it is specially noticeable on account of three long red stigmas. 
as if three ends of thread of that color had been fastened 
there to mark it by. 

But that was no reason why it should be named for the 
sorceress Medea, of classic fable. When autumn came, h 
ever, we guessed the riddle. She gave to Jason enchanted 
herbs to put him to sleep, according to the story of the search 
for the golden fleece. And was not this enchanted, when, in 




WE INVESTIGATED WITH REFERENCE TO THE CUCUMBERS. 



LINNsEA. 99 

September, the whorls of leaves, which at two places wide 
apart encircled the stem, were dyed of the richest crimson 
at the base, whence it spread more and more like a stain of 
blood ? 

It has been quite a habit with botanists to fix some classic 
name to a flower ; and it is no more than fair that they 
should give us the reason. There is nothing about the shrub 
andromeda, to recall the ill-used princess who was chained 
to a rock ; and the circse, or enchanter's nightshade, is as 
harmless a little white flower as the strawberry blossom. 

LINSLEA. 

In the " Norway pines " were beds of Linnasa. When we 
first knew about it there was only one ; in after years there 
were several. To go there day after day in the time of 
bloom ; to stand and look at those fairy bells ; to kneel 
down on the moss and inhale their fragrance, was an ever 
new delight. No wonder Linnaeus was so enraptured when 
he first set eyes on this sweet twin flower away up in 
Lapland. It has been the joy of botanists and travellers in 
Alpine regions from that day to this ; " a sight for sair 
een," as Walter Scott would have said. 

It is so retiring, so shy, such a drooping, blushing recluse, 
that I felt as if a sacrilege had been committed when one 



ioo WILD FLOWERS. 

summer, as I was going along a by-road, I saw a bank of 
it out in the sun, left exposed where a forest had just been 
cut down. That piece of woods had always been the home 
of many of the more delicate kinds of wild flowers ; but 
the trees had been felled and drawn off in winter ; and 
when these tender things woke from their sleep it was to 
find that their shelter was no longer there. And here they 
were pining and dwindling for lack of their wonted moisture 
and seclusion. I should have thought that all the dryads 
would have cried out at such a wrong. I rescued a few 
of the homesick Linnaea, and gave them protection anion a- 
the ferns by a friendly well. 

WE CIRCUMNAVIGATE THE PASTURE. 

I have left the loveliest to the last. On a memorable 
day we discovered it. 

To explain : You must have seen the possibilities of such 
a piece of territory as Ci the pasture," though you have not 
seen them all. Probably no forty acres of land ever afforded 
more enjoyment to the owner and his children than that 
piece of real estate. 

It was a very zigzag tract ; and one morning early in 
June we took it in our heads to circumnavigate it, as we 
said ; or, as surveyors would term it, " perambulate the 




LINN^EA— WE TRANSPLANTED THEM TO THE SHELTER 
OF SOME FERNS. 



THE WHITE " BIRD-ON-THE-WINGr 103 

line." This was a thing we had never done ; and on 
account of the swamp, which ran over into the land of 
other people, and, by reason of the circumstance that a 
fence was almost out of the question in certain,- spots, and 
bounds were somewhat mythical in that quarter, was con- 
sidered impracticable ; but which, cost what it might, we 
were determined should remain undone no longer. We would 
explore the unknown, reach Ultima Thule. What happened, 
how long it took, how we lost our bearings as soon as 
the brush fence became extinct, what depths we sounded, 
what perils dared, what a blistering, foot-weary, devious, 
difficult route we went, and with what plucky spirits we 
pushed on, and what immense satisfaction we had when the 
thing was an accomplished fact — these have nothing to do 
with the subject in hand. 

THE WHITE " BIED-ON-THE-WIXG." 

We came out in the " Norway pines," and the ground 
was, as usual about that season — it was the seventh of 
June — all one rosy light with the flowers of the fringed 
polygala. Not rose exactly, not purple, not lavender, but 
of a hue made from all these colors as only flowers are 
made : soft, bright, blushing, auroral, the rosy purple of the 
morning sky. 



104 WILD FLOWERS. 

As we strolled along, pulling handfuls of them, what was 
our astonishment to behold white ones ! They were not faded 
ones, but white, a distinct variety. There was a space of 
several rods quite covered with them, though the purple 
were interspersed. A few straggled further away ; but beyond 
that limited area, not then, or ever after, could we find one. 

They were white as milk. Nearly all white flowers that 
you can think of have some tinge of color, be it never so 
slight ; or there will be some veins or spots, or else some 
tinted tip to the stamens. It is rare, exceedingly rare, to 
find a flower which is absolutely and in every part, white. 
But this was. It had not a speck or hint of color about 
it. The petals, the wings, the fringe, all were milk-white. It 
was the purest flower I ever saw. 

The common purple one has the name of " bird-on-the- 
wing." If you turn back two portions of it, you will see 
good reason why. There sure enough, is the bird with 
wings outspread. This ineffably lovely one was like a white 

dove just ready to fly. 

We had many times expressed the wish that in " the 
pasture " we could only find a flower which we had not 
already seen. And now it had come to pass. 

THE LADY'S-SLIPPER. 

The next gay comer after the purple polygala was the 




PASTURE EIL1ES — A SUMPTUOUS SHEAF. 



THE LADY'S-SLIPPER. 



107 



lady's - slipper, which in all countries is recognized as some- 
thing of the shoe kind. With botanists it is Cypripedium, a 
grand word for " Venus' sock " or buskin. In some Catholic 
lands it is " Our Lady's slipper," for the Virgin Mary ; amono* 
the French peasants it is " the sabot of the Virgin." The 
Indians called it " moccasin flower," and the children have 
the prettiest of all — "Whip-poor- Will's shoes." 

There is one variety in greenhouses which ought to be 
labelled " Cinderella's slipper," for it is half transparent and 
of pale, glistening green ; so much like glass that you can 
fancy it sliding off and losing itself, like the enchanted 
slipper of that frightened runaway from the fairy ball. 

Our one kind, red, on a single stem, has still another 
name of wild valerian : and once when we were coming 
home with our hands full, we met that queer old man who 
knew more of this sort of lore than anybody we had ever 
seen, and he said, " See here ! you take that, and you can 
look on the sun, and it will be like the moon, your eyes 
will be so strong ; " which advice, being venturesome as we 
were, I wonder we never tried to follow. 

At another time, he told us if we carried daisies home 
we must burn them ; for they were the " Nottingham 
curses ; " and if we threw one of the flowers out on the 
land, we'd never get rid of it again. 

I feel obliged to confess that we were guilty of intro- 



108 WILD FLOWERS. 

ducing a good many wilding things into cultivated places- 
Some anomalous plants from time to time made their 
unwelcome appearance in the garden ; and we three young 
folks kept discreet silence when there was great wonder 
expressed as to how they ever got there. We did, however, 
acknowledge the sarsaparilla, which obtained a root-hold and 
held it, at the back doorstep. 

THE '' LAND-LILIES." 

That is what we all called them. First, those in "the 
pasture. 1 ' They grew amidst the sweet-fern and brakes and 
low blueberry bushes on each side of the sled-path. They 
have grown there these forty years. There they were the 
very last summer that ever was, glowing in the green shade 
like torches. Those orange-red lilies — what a burning color 
they have ! how rich the tawny spots ! what elegant upturned 
bells ! We were always covetous about them, and, selfishly 
appropriating them, carried them all home — a sumptuous sheaf. 
And to this day I do the same. I can never leave one 
standing. Wherever I see one, if it is possible I have it. 

Then there were the Canada lilies. They came later, and 
also lasted longer. We had to go further for them, to the 
meadow and the intervals ( or " intervales" as the farmers 
were wont to say). That is a local New England word, 




CANADA LILIES — ON STATELY STEMS. 



THE " LAND-LILIESr 



ii i 



which cannot well be spared, and it is as good as " bottom 
lands" of the West. 

In the rich alluvial soil where such long grasses are, stood 
the stately lily-stems, sometimes taller than everything else ; 
and there they swayed and swung, as the grass swayed in 
billowy swells before the wind. And the flowers, as they bent 
and rose again, made dashes of brightness like sun-flecks going 
and coming The strong stems spread off at the top like a 
candelabra, supporting ten, twelve, or more, of the recurved 
flowers. The colors 
were oriental in 
their combination, 
and superb in ef- 
fect , gold with car- 
mine and bright 
brown in veins and 
shadings and blot- 
ches. And the buds 
were the perfection 
of elegance, as fin- 
ished in their fine 
arch and lines as the 
curves of a violin. 




OVER T THE TOND. 



In our pasture-bogs we had the yellow water-lilies — spatter- 
dock, cow-lilies — strange, tropical-looking plants, with their 



ii2 WILD FLOWERS. 

pulpy, slippery, heart-shaped leaves of shining green, their 
buds of green rimmed with gold, and flower-cups green and 
gold without, purple-stained within. And it was the greenest 
ot green and the most golden of gold ; and the flowers had 
a double coronet, as if it were device of some royal house 
which had gained this dual sign of sovereignty by illustrious 
marriage or force of arms. 

" OVER T' THE POND." 

There are two wild flowers that are favorites with every- 
body, People who care for no others are touched by the 
beauty, the purity and fragrance of the trailing arbutus and 
the white pond-lily. 

If all the spring's newness, the scent of the mosses, the 
quickening life which makes one's pulses leap, is m the first, 
so the best of midsummer is in the other. 

To go after lilies — what pictures of cool green woods 
overshadowing the margin of some lonelv sheet of water that 
calls up ! What winding ways knee-deep in fern to reach it ! 
What a silence broods there, except as some bird's note breaks 
upon it, or the plash of a dipping wing, or a rustle among 
the reeds as cattle come down to drink, or the small voices 
of insects stincrinsf the noontide air. 

I have in mind just that place and time. It was a July 



O VER T THE POND. 



ii3 



day, at high noon. Midday, when the sun blazes down at 

the fiercest, is the best time to see lilies. For are they not 

sun-worshipers ? Then they 

are wide open , their golden 

hearts, bare to his gaze, shed 

fragrance for him, as some 

night flowers return it for 

the dew. The story is that 

when evening approaches they 

go to sleep. And when the 

period arrives for them to 




SILENCE BROODS THERE. 



die, they turn over on their faces and sink down out of 
sight forever into the black ooze from which they sprung. 



114 



WILD FLOWERS. 



The pond was away in from travelled ways and habita- 
tions of men. We had always known about it, for our elders 

had often been, and 
brought home lilies 
and the queer pitch- 
ers of the sarra- 
cenia, called by the 
children "fox- 
gloves." 

The older folks 
always spoke of it 
as " over t' the 
pond," and we had 
a strong desire, to go. 
Strange water- 
fowl had been seen 
there, and the cry 
of a loon had been heard, and there was a quak- 
ing cranberry meadow over on the other side. Attractive 
place ! It had a fascination to us ; there was the element of 
the unusual and unknown. What if we should see a crane 
snowy white, or a heron tall as we were? The thought was 
enough to thrill one. As for the loon — that was too much 
to hope for. 

We went: the road was an old, neglected one, little used. 




POND LILIES. 



OVER V THE POND. 



"5 



Grass grew in it as in a field, and blackberry-bushes almost 
overran it. It seemed away off; not lonesome, but separated 
from the common life. And the pond lay sparkling in the 
midday sun, down half a mile from the road, half rimmed 
in green woods ; and the cranberry meadow showed ruddy on 
the further shore. 

Everything was worth remembering. The rough "side-hill" 
pasture down which we 
raced and scrambled 
was picturesque witl 
its boulders of 




iWAY IX FItOM TRAVELLED "WAYS. 



gray granite, its scattering 

trees and patches of fern. 

At the margin there were beds of maiden 

hair; and the triumphal cinnamon ferns, 

1 which are so like branches of palm, were 

the very Titans of their race, each separate one four or five 

feet long. Wonderful reeds, and the flags where cat-tails are, 



n6 



WILD FLOWERS. 



made a jungle almost tall enough for the cows to get lost in 
as they went pressing their way through. 

Down on the little beach of white sand, standing just in 
the water, grew the pretty little speckled heads of pipewort, 
and the, silvery, begonia-like flowers of the floating-heart. 
Scarlet cardinal-flowers glowed like fire among the shadows 
under the trees at the water's edge ; and there were rods 
out on the pond which were blue with pickerel-weed over the 
whole area, like the deep blue of the noon sky in midwinter. 
The lilies were all open ; one could gather them by the 

boat-load. Dripping, white, golden- 
^fZS" stemmed, they gave out fragrance as 
if censers of incense were be- 
ing waved by invisible hands 
in the air. 



THE PITCHER PLANTS, 

The meadow was 

' in its glory ; not with 

- ^ ripe cranberries — it 

was too early — but 

with pitcher-plants in bloom. 

Under that fervid July sun 

they glowed like the glorious 




A PITCHER PLANT FAMILY 



THE PITCHER PLANTS. 117 

red of old stained glass, or like a ruby stone, or wine when 
the light shines through it. On a dark day the color is prob- 
ably purplish and dull, but on a bright one it is as I have 
said ; it is sumptuous. 

The flower is in shape like no other. It has been fancied 
to resemble a side-saddle : wherefore the name. 

The form and use of the leaf suggest the three others by 
which it is known. It is a fox-glove — a very long-wristed one r. 
it is a pitcher-plant, and a huntsman's cup ; all quite to the 
purpose. 

The pitcher has a hood which serves for cover. It is always 
upright, holds nearly a gill of water, and is never empty. The 
texture is so tough that it will bear being kept on the hot 
coals till the water boils. Many a time we have tried the 
experiment. In those days such a term as " carniverous " had 
hardly been applied to plants. It would have seemed worse 
than the cannibals. Nevertheless, our superb sarracenia entraps 
insects in that fatal cup, and destroys, devours, absorbs, or in 
some way annihilates them. A.nd a curious little sun-dew, 
which we afterwards found on a meadow, glistening as its name 
indicates, does the same unnatural thing. 

The pitcher-plant is peculiar in every respect. A family 
grows about itself, and keeps up a perpetual renewal of its 
members. When an old one begins to decay, a new one 
starts out, or vice versa. But being tenacious of life, the 



u3 WILD FLOWERS. 

patriarchs are long in dying : meanwhile the younglings appear 
in the form of a crimson wand, very handsome ; but in 
growing, change to the established standard — the perfect 
pitcher in green veined with red. Seen on the background 
of dull crimson peat or sphagnum moss which carpets the 
meadow, they present an appearance most unique. 

After that we hoped for anything and everything, even for 
kinds that were not supposed to grow about here. We sought 
with expectation for the hare-bell, the pure white trillium. 
and the white cardinal-flower, and even for the walking fern. 
And might there not be a rhodora ? At first it was more 
than doubtful. It was like the chance of there being a holly, 
or a magnolia, or a pink water-lily. But when we heard 

of a certain " scra^odv bush covered with red flowers."' before 

_ _ 

the leaves blooming in June, which somebody remembered to 
have seen in a far-off rocky pasture, while another somebody 
tried to describe something similar in another lonesome pasture 
miles in the opposite direction, our enthusiasm was at the 
highest pitch, and we felt the stimulus of assured success. 
And the rhodora it was and is .' Flowers from one of those 
bushes are here before me this moment as I write. What 
rapture when we saw them for the first time ! My companion 
of so many jaunts clapped her hands for joy. To think, 
too. that all those year- it had been blossoming almost 
unknown, awav back in those solitudes, amidst the sweet-fern 




RHODORA A]STD FRINGED POLYGALA. 



THE PITCHER PLANTS. 



121 




and brakes in our own New Hamp- 
shire mountain pastures — the fringed, 
flushed, exquisite thing! But Emerson 
answers the question why that should 
be- — why it should bloom "to please 

the desert," in those loveliest lines of his, which will always 

bring up his benignant face : 



Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why 

This charm is wasted on the marsh arid sky, 

Dear, tell them that if eyes were made for seeing, 

Then beauty is its own excuse for being. 

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! 

I never thought to ask, I never knew ; 

But in my simple ignorance suppose 

The selfsame power that brought me there brought you." 



And next, we heard of " river-pinks " wonderful for fragrance, 



122 WILD FLOWERS. 

and fringed like a honeysuckle: and what should they prove 
to be but the flow ers had been on the lookout for evei 

since, once on a time, we had had glimpses of their kind in 
bloomy thickets down by the sea — azalias ! 

Yes: -vrrything lalmos: eve vthing) comes to him who 
will wait ; and if these were conventional papers they should 
all come along in an orderly and timely way: the lady's- 
slipper and the polygala and rhodora should be earlier in 
the ranks ; but they are here like the happenings in our 
lives, and their story is partly of to-day and yesterday, and 
partly of long ago. told in little episodes, often reminiscent. 
always rambling, and always a flower-life which was a very 
real and delightful part of our own. 



WILD FLOWERS OF AUTUMN. 



VXfHEN does 
s u m m e r 
leave off and au- 
tumn begin ? Ask 
the katydids and 
the grasshoppers . 
They seem to have 
a good deal to do 
with the matter. 
When they begin to 
pipe and chirp it 
is midsummer ; by 
the time they have 
performed their little part we are far into autumn. 

Between the dates much has happened, and many flowers 
that loved those earlier days are no more. 

The cardinal's flower lingers on. You can find it in 
abundance in September — I ought to take back that word 
" find " as a kind of wrong done to this imperial presence, 
for be it where it may, to miss it is impossible. It makes 




AVHEKE SOME BLACK MILLPOND COMES INTO THE 
FANORAMA. 



124 



WILD FLOWERS. 



itself seen as a jet of fire would, though it is not in hue 
like fire, but the deeper red of warm red blood ; a live 

color such as pul- 
sates and burns in 
a blood-red gem ; "the 
color likest blood," 
as the old Saxon writ- 
ers said of the car- 
buncle. It is the su- 
premest expression of 
red, its very perfec- 
tion and exaltation. 
We have no other 
flower that has it. 
If you should lay a 
bunch of scarlet ger- 
aniums of the most glowing scarlet known to that flower, 
or the rich, warm salvia, by the side of it, they would 
look faded and cheap. 

" King's fingers " is one of the common names, said to 
be from a fancied resemblance of the petals (soft as velvet) 
to the spread fingers of a glove; and king's gloves they 
needs must be. The other, taking it away up in the eccle- 
siastical world, keeps always in mind the red of the cardi- 
nal's cassock and hat. 




A BLUE AND WHITE GINGER-POT OF DAISIES. 



THE CARDINALS FLOWER. 



125 



Oh! flower of sovereign and ecclesiastical rank, has another 
these dual honors ? Its choice is often for a dark place, from 
which it seems to be advancing, so boldly is it projected against 
the green gloom. Often it stands just under the roots of some 
tree which the caving in of a river-bank has left bare ; oftener 
I have seen it away in in some secluded cove where the 
sun was never known to shine. Certainly its superb color- 
has some sources with which light has nothing to do. 

It is evidently quite a cosmopolitan. How frequently in 
rushing along in the cars through 
the country one catches sight of 
its glorious blood-red where some 
black mill-pond or bend in a river 
comes for an instant into the pan- 
orama. It seems to be as well 
suited with the salt breath of the 
ocean as with the inland air ; per- 
haps glowing even more fervidly, 
if the thing is possible, as all 
flowers do by the sea. One day 
in August I saw its tall spires 
among swamp azalias on the edge 
of a pool almost out by the light- 
house at Gay Head; and it was like coming across a friend 
from home. 




WITH OUK TOES FASTENED IN A 
CRACK. 



126 WILD FLOWERS. 

How pleasant it is to associate flowers in this way with 
some place where we saw them, and to remember a little 
trip by something which was there in bloom ! In doing so, 
we unconsciously keep invisible flower-journals almost as accu- 
rate as if we had set down the dates. 

In this way I remember just when and where I first saw 
harebells (the bonny bluebells of Scotland), and all the cir- 
cumstances of the journey, and how the country looked, and 
where for the second time, }~ears later, I saw their kind 
again. It was in mid-August, as before, but this time they 
were swinging airily, blue as the deep blue of the sky, up 
in the fissures of that tremendous mountain wall which shuts 
close upon the pass down the valley of the Saco to the 
Willey House. 

I recall, too. those ledges, nine miles out at sea, so gray 
with their orange-colored lichens, and adorned in every crevice 
with the scarlet pimpernel, holding up such burning bright 
cups to be filled with noon sunshine; and those purple levels 
of marsh rosemary against dazzling sands; and the samphire 
which dyed with sumptuous amaranth great watery wastes 
where the tide came up. 

I shall never forget the daisies along a certain mowing- 
field ; nor how, on a morning dripping dew on us from every 
laden bough, we rode on a cross-road which was a s;reen 
lane and nothing more, threading in and out. now in sunshine 



THE CARDINALS FLOWER. 



127 



and then in shade; nor how close the red lilies grew beside 
the track; nor how the daisies stood on the grassy ridcre 
between the ruts 
which wheels had 
worn, standing so 
tall that they 
reached the horse's 
breast; how we 
watched them bend 
their heads as we 
pressed against 
them, and, when we 
had gone on. sweep 
back uninjured. All the mid- 
summer days, and summer mead- 
ows, and waysides off where 
country roads go, were cheerful 
with those pure faces ; and we, 
too, thought that " nothing less 
than a blue and white ginger-pot full of daisies " was " much 
satisfaction." 

But that one field, it is so sun-fixed, so photographed, on 
my mental vision that I never need be, I never am, with- 
out daisies. These are perpetual blossoms; they are with me 
the whole year round; they never fade; their time is now, 




BUT THE BANK WAS STEEP. 



128 



WILD FLOWERS 



and to-morrow, and every day, if I choose, as I do, to see 
them : swaying on their slim stalks, white, open-faced, sunny, 
beautiful, on a green " mede," as fair to the eye as that 
which Chaucer praised. He, of all the singers, seems most 




UP THE KIVEK. 



passionately to have worshipped this dear flower, the " clay's-eye " 
of the poets, the " bairn-wort," or child's flower, of the Scottish 
peasants. 



" Of all the flowers in the mede 

Then love I most these flowers of white and rede, 

Such that men call daisies in our town : 

To them I have so great affection 



ON THE ISLAND. 



129 



That I get up, and walking in the mede 
To see this flower against the sun spreade: 
And soon as ever the sun ginneth west 
To seen this flower, how it will go to rest.' 



ON THE ISLAND. 



The " king's fingers " was the first river-flower we knew. 
Standing on the old bridge and raising ourselves to the 




HOME BY WATEK INSTEAD OF LAND. 

utmost by fastening our 

toes in a crack between 

the planks, we young folks, 

off for a Saturday half holiday, would gaze longingly up 

the river, spying here one, and there another. But the 

bank was steep, and it shelved out over them to deep 



130 



WILD FLOWERS. 



water ; therefore from the land side they were inaccessible. 
However, there was another way — we could wade to them, 
and we did. 

On one occasion when we were a mile down the river, 




FROM BRIDGE TO BRIDGE. 



it came into our heads to go home by water instead of 
land. So we waded in the middle of the stream all the 
way up from bridge to bridge. There was an outlaw kind 
of pleasure in doing something that it was not likely any- 
body else had clone, or thought of doing. 

It was a novel method of following the river, and there 
was vast satisfaction in it. We explored the mysterious 




THE PLACE OF WILD GRAPE-VINES. 



ON THE ISLAND. 133 

recesses along the alder-fringed banks, which could not be 
seen except from our place of vantage. We gathered pipe- 
worts and cardinal-flowers, dainty ferns and grasses. We 
walked into the brown shadows, and out again into the 
liquid gold, where the warm September sunshine lighted 
the water. We were associates of white butterflies and 
the dragon-flies which on gauzy wings were flitting the same 
way we were taking. Birds' nests were revealed to us in 
perilous situations : empty now, and their late occupants were 
abroad like ourselves for an outing ; and we all alike were 
in a sort of enchanted realm, away from the world of study 
and work and stints and chores, irresponsible and happy. 

Our childish escapade ended on an island which we knew 
a good deal about in those days. It was long and narrow, 
with the " canal " on one side and the river on the other, 
the old grist-mill at the lower end, the dam and saw-mill 
at the upper. A sort of jungle it was at that time of year, 
where quantities of such coarse, showy things as the purple 
and white thorough wort, milk-weed and white-topped aster 
grew, and some tawdry plants of the sunflower pattern, which 
we called elecampane or angelica, just as it happened, with- 
out knowing; whether either was correct. Of course there 
was a drapery of the sticky cleavers (catch-weed or bed-straw), 
pretty, and almost as delicate as a green gauze veil ; but 
how it would attach itself to one's garments ! And then 



WILD FLOWERS. 

that other officious thing of the too clinging kind, belono-ino; 
to the -beggar tick" race, which fastened its barbs into 
the cloth like fish-hooks, whence they had to be picked out 
one bv one; thistles too, and burdocks. But there were 
compensations for all these. 

Miles of clematis, for one thing. We were always bringing 
home great loads of it. We went there after it at both its 
seasons of loveliness. First when it was in exuberance of 
bloom 7 with its clusters of pale-green flowers of the tint of 
sea-foam. It must have been in blossoming time that some- 
body gave it the happy name, by which it is often called. 
of b * traveller's joy ; n and it must have been that vision of 
grace and purity which suggested the other and more common 
one of - virgin's bower."' Then, when going to seed, shasr^v 
and gray, some one. seeing it. said it was •• old man's beard." : 
One other is equally appropriate and always so. and was 
very likely to have been used as long ago as the old English 
botanist Evelyn's time — the good strong Saxon witky-wmd. 

Woodbine too, or Virginia creeper, in flaming crimson all 
through late autumn ; and it was a place of wild grape-vines, 
whose strong arms held everything else up. In June the 
island was all one subtile, delicate, bewitching fragrance with 
the flowers, as if from banks of violets or mignonette — the 
Junes of all those years were perfumed with them : and m 
3 : ember and October the air was flavored like a vineyard 




BKIJtfGIXG HOME GREAT LOADS OF IT. 



ON THE ISLAND. 137 

in vintage time when the sun drew the winey odor out. 
They had a puckery, acid tang to them, those grapes, if 
the truth must be told ; but what of that ? 

Other trailers and climbers were the green-brier, which is 
a smilax on an enlarged plan, bearing the most astonishingly 
solid blue-black berries as hard as bullets ; and the bitter- 
sweet nightshade with the brilliant blue flowers with a golden 
eye. Then there were several autumn-blooming plants which 
hovered on the edge of this greenery; the snake's-head, or 
turtle-head, or shell-flower, in flesh-color with gaping lips ; 
the vervain, in deadened blue, like steel ; the friendly herb 
known sometimes as " self-heal," because it is an antidote for 
poison, and sometimes as " blue-curls." It is this which 
Thoreau refers to, as seeing it in March, holding up its 
u seemingly empty pitchers " in the snow. 

On the island, too, we always expected to find that won- 
derful flower, the closed gentian, with its symmetrical tubes 
that never open, set in a cluster, as coral insects might 
build, or like the cells in honeycomb, or as cubes of crystal 
are sometimes grouped in a piece of granite. And such a 
blue as it is ! the burning blue of a dark-blue gem shading 
into violet. It is like the " blue fire " of the firmament. 

The one consummate flower of the autumn does not grow 
here, or if it does, we have failed to discover or hear of it. 
For years we have been searching and inquiring for the fringed 



138 WILD FLOWERS. 

gentian. " What is the flower like ? " is the question put to 
us ; and nobody but a painter or a poet can make an answer 
that will do justice to that divine blue, and the fringe of 
it like fringed lashes. We are still seekers. It is the ideal 
flower we are in quest of. The miles and miles of country 
1 can remember by that eager looking for ! Some day we 
shall find it. Meanwhile, just once we have seen it growing, 
while on a journey late in October: and the blue vision is 
never to be forgotten. There are many persons who have 
waited as long, and never seen it at all. this heavenly flower : 

" Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall." 

ALONG THE RAILROAD. 

A more delicate species of blue-curls grew in the gravel 
along the railroad track and between the sleepers — a wee 
bit of a bush like lavender or penny-royal, covered with 
dainty blue pitchers just ready to drop oft. and it gave out 
a warm, aromatic odor, as penetrating as summer-savory. TThen 
we brought it home our garments would smell like a garden 
of herbs. 

Another trim thing which we found nowhere else was the 
spotted spurge, spread out on that scorched and barren gravel, 
and hugging it close as if it were glued there. The color of 




CLEMATIS AND DODDER. 



ALONG THE RAILROAD. 141 

the plant throughout was dull crimson ; the leaves and vine 
were minute, but every curve was one of grace. It grew in 
obedience to some law of beauty, and looked like a red pat- 
tern daintily traced on a sand-colored surface. There likewise 
was a dwarf horse-tail or scouring rush, that made one think 
of a Cossack or wild Tartar of the steppes, stunted, sturdy and 
barbaric. The taller, graceful kind was abundant down in 
the ditches on each side. We took pleasure in always speaking 
of it as " gun-bright," because we had heard some old person 
say that in early times the men used it to scour their 
muskets and " Queen's arms " with, whence it got that quaint 
name, so characteristic of a primitive people* And that 
brings to mind what we were told about the button-balls ( I 
have referred to them as growing so profusely in those pas- 
ture bogs ), which bristle all over with points, as anybody 
can see ; therefore some person of peculiar ideas fixed to them 
the name of " old maid's beetles," to belabor somebody or 
something with, as a wood-chopper pounds away at his wedges. 

We went on those railroad tramps more or less frequently 
for eight months out of the twelve, starting as early as March 
after sheaves of the bright willow osiers, and never giving up 
until the snow came in good earnest. So we were in the 
way of knowing what that line of country had to show. 

It was on one of those expeditions that we first saw 
dodder ; not, however, growing on the trunk of an . oak, as 



1 42 WILD FLOWERS. 

we had somewhere read, nor on any tree. The time was 
when the great plumy sprays of purple and sky-blue asters, 
the queen-of-the-meadow, and other such showy and sturdy 
autumnal flowers were in their prime. The impatious touch- 
me-not, snap-weed, wild balsamine (or whatever one may 
choose from its list of names), was also rioting in bloom, 
and those spotted ear-drops of burning gold mottled with 
brown hung like jewels along the lush green stems \ and the 
place where these things and the vervain, the clematis, the 
clivus, the golden-rod and ferns were growing together was 
a flower hedge of beauty. In the midst of it a dodder had 
come up like any regular plant out of the ground. It was 
a slight otter-colored thread where it started, and such a thread 
it continued to be, as if it was being spun out by elfin 
fingers working night and day away down out of sight. 

A magic thing it really seemed, a pretty wonder ; it had 
wound itself tight around every plant in the neighborhood, 
and tied them all together in double and triple nooses, and 
then gone on to do further mischief; and the gay little thread 
showed from quite a distance like bright embroidery on the 
green. It was in blossom, too, bossed with clusters of tiny 
white flowers. A few weeks later, when we passed that way, 
it had gone to seed, and the transparent globules were like 
pearl beads. We broke on a stem to examine them ; and I 
suppose a seed dropped into the bunch of wood-sorrel and 



INDIAN PIPE. 143 

herb Robert we had in our hands, for one day the winter 
after, we discovered a dodder growing with these plants in 
the hanging basket where they had been planted. 

INDIAN PIPE. 

We found that autumn another of the parasites, the many- 
flowered Indian pipe, technically, monotropa hypopitys (collo- 
quially "bird's nest," and "pine sap.") The common Indian 
pipe, that lovely calumet, so exquisitely moulded as if from 
white wax, may be met with in any of our rich woods ; but 
the other is comparatively rare. The most remarkable thing 
about it is its fragrance. A single stalk of this plant, which 
never had leaf, or color, or proper flower, will scent for weeks 
a room in which it is kept, and the perfume never wholly 
leaves the dried-up cluster. It is not the balsam odor of the 
pines, but a delicious sweetness like white violets — like a whole 
handful of white violets, a nosegay on a single stem. 

GOLDEN DAYS. 

By the middle of September the world begins to look autumnal. 
One may not be able to explain just what the change is. 
It is not quite definable in words, though the eye perceives it, 
and it is in the very atmosphere. It has been silent and 
gradual, but a new phase has come, and all at once we know 



144 WILD FLOWERS. 

it. Then we become aware that the perishable kinds of 
flowers have passed by ; the tender things have vanished ; 
we have seen the last of them ; those which shed their petals 
and are of similar evanescent habits, are gone. No more 
dainty chalices and stars ; the trumpets and bells have 
dropped; they belong with the by-gones. The need now 
is of woody fibre, strong stems and fast colors. Composite 
flowers make most of the list on the late catalogue ; such 
as the golden-rod, that has been ever since June preparing 
for the protracted bloom which we have assurance of in the 
long spike of graduated buds. 

There is no longer any shyness or hiding. Almost every- 
thing seeks the light and stands out to take all the sun- 
shine that the shortening days can give; and there are but 
few of the merely tinted flowers or those of equivocal hue. 
Hardly any are fragrant — for the pungent odor of golden-rod 
and aster will not bear the name. I must except the life- 
everlasting which diffuses such fine aroma as the foot touches 
it ; and that luscious little orchid of the Spiranthus family, by 
some spoken of as the spiral neottia or the twisted spike, but 
of tenest as " slender ladies' tresses " — I have somewhere read 
that the proper one is "ladies' traces" from a likeness to the 
ornamented cord (called " traces" in old English), which the 
Saxon ladies used to wear about the waist for girdles. 

These are the days of blue and gold, when the asters of so 




SACRED TO GOLDEN-BOD. 



GOLDEN DA YS. 



147 



many cerulean hues make the earth look as if patches of the 
sky had fallen, and there are whole fields in one blaze of glory 
with golden-rod. If 
we were to look for 
symbols and " cor- 
respondences," as 
some people do, as 
Mrs. Whitney does 
in her charming 
books, and believe 
that each color 
meant something 
and bore a definite 
relation to some 
other thing, we 
should have to say 
that these two rep- 
resent the blue of 
the enduring heav- 
ens and the briorht- 




WILD PLACES. 



ness of the unfailing sun. Not long ago some writer expressed 
the hope that " that coarse flower, the golden-rod," which 
has for the past few years been painted on so many panels 
and plaques, would go out of fashion ! As if fashion could 
suppress a flower ! Not if everybody has the enthusiasm 



i 4 8 WILD FLOWERS. 

over it that we have, bringing home every autumn of our 
lives loads of the glorious, tossing plumes to keep constantly 
fresh in the great Delft pitcher, sacred to golden-rod. 

Yellow is the chief color among our New England wild 
flowers, taking the seasons through. If it was possible to 
map out the color lines, as geological strata are defined in 
charts, it would be seen to be in excess of any other. The 
acres, the leagues of golden-rod would settle it. From the 
coming of the crow-foot and dandelion until the witch 
hazel is in bloom, we have it in variety of shades ; and 
we need all the illumination that this opulent color can 
give us. Sometimes they are but shallow cups which garner 
the golden light, like the cinque-foil and the inconspicuous 
lady's sorrel, but they brim and beam with it. The warm, 
glad sun-color — so much of it ! — in the commonest things ; 
delicate gold of purest quality in the despised mullein ; deep 
yellow gold in the celandine ; red gold in the solid corymbed 
heads of tansy ; petals of beaten, burnished gold, like the 
costly work for the temple in the buttercup — with what 
a polish it shines ! All the golds that goldsmiths know are 
in the flowers of the field and the wayside flowers. Saffron 
yellow in the loose strife and the St. John's worts and St. 
Peter's worts and rock rose tribe ; daffodil yellow in the 
evening primrose and toad-flax ; gamboge, coarse, but gorgeous, 
in the rayecl-out elecampane, and in those purple-eyed daisies 




IN THE WILD AND WINDY TWILIGHT. 



WILD PLACES. 151 

which make a field where they grow look as if it was 
lighted with candles. 

WILD PLACES. 

If one would know wild flowers it is necessary some- 
times to go to wild places. There is a ledgy hillside which 
is as gay in autumn as a garden of the tropics with 
shining; beds of fern, and the changing; sumach and wild 
cherry blazing like an oriflamme, where the mountain 
currant trails its leaves of the color of wine when it is 
red within the cup. Down over it, along the zigzag lines of 
shrunken water-courses, are lines of thicket, dark, dank and 
tangled with brambles — the veriest jungles, where the 
heaven above 3^011 is shut out, and the ground beneath is 
now oozy with moisture, now treacherous with slippery 
stones. That was one of our haunts ; and after nearly 
every other flower had gone, it was possible to find a 
blossom of the rich, rose-like flowering raspberry, and 
perhaps one or two of the unique and fine-flavored berries. 
Once, in November, even after there had been a light fall of 
snow, we traversed the roughest of cart-paths and found an 
herb Robert in bloom, in the fissures of a rock among the 
shield ferns, just the kind of place where, earlier, we were 
sure of the jaunty little corydalis of the gayly painted 



152 WILD FLOWERS. 

drops, and bluish, rue-like leaves ; and as we came down 
in the wild and windy twilight we plucked the last of the 
asters. 

We knew that rough, break-neck place like our own door-yard. 
I: was a tedious jaunt to go up by that old, gullied road, 
which we had to do in order to strike out to the head of 
one of the ravines. And though every time while we were 
stopping on our way up and resting under the gnarly 
yellow birch, we sat and gazed away with eyes that never 
tired of it, at the bold, blue peak of Kearsarge, which 
made the northern background, and declared it was a 
sight so inspiring that we would soon come again, we had 
abundant reason for changing our minds after we had had 
an hour of climbing and slipping, and then pressing our 
way down through the dreadful thickets that awaited us. 
After all that, we found our zeal materially flagging in 
sympathy with our lagging feet ; we were not as enthu- 
siastic on the downward as we were on the ascending 
way. so that every time we came home, tired almost to 
death, we as positively declared that we would never do it 
again. 

And before the week was out we were back up there, 
going over the same ground, and coming home with our arms 
full of things — mostlv things with berries. I never saw so 
many kinds in one spot as we used to find there ; cornels. 



%£)/ ill 




WILD PLACES. 



155 



elders and viburnums ; " pigeon-plums ; " the swinging, blue- 
green peas of the large Solomon's seal; snowy white cohosh 




TIRED ALMOST TO DEATH 



on stems like red coral ; burning cone of Jack-in-the-pulpit ; 
fiery scarlet of the black alder ; lucent crimson of the two- 
leaved Solomon's seal ; ruddy apples of the hobble-bush ; vel- 
vety seed-heads of the stag-horn sumach. 

In a bog away up on the hill were some cat-tails on stalks 
four feet long; polypod ferns of shining green were in great 
luxuriance in the woods ; bleached ferns ; sensitive ferns, 
turning all shades of brown, sea-green and purple, running 



i 5 6 



WILD FLOWERS. 



into each other ; gigantic cinnamon ferns, the Anaks of their 
kind; and the superb Osmunda. with its pinnated leaves — 
" that tall fern " which Wordsworth so admired as 

" So stately, of the queen Osmunda named." 
WITCH HAZEL. 



Another autumn haunt was a wood from which much of- the 

underbrush had been 
removed. It was like 
being in Arcadia ; or 
as if Arcadia might 
be where that tranquil 
landscape in the dis- 
tance could be seen 
through the vistas, with 
the blue mountain peak 
filling all the farther 
horizon. Through this 
forest dim wound many 
footpaths, wandering 
off anywhere, and then 
apparently ceasing. 

OF THE QUEEX OSMl'XDA NAMED." 

They had been worn by 
the hand-sled in winter and some sort of drag in summer, on 




WITCH HAZEL. 



157 



which the man who had gathered up the fallen branches 
had conveyed his load away. Now nobody appeared to 
traverse them but 
ourselves. In there 
we seemed as much 
away from the world 
as if we had been 
on Selkirk's island. 
The village was just 
below, almost with- 
in speaking dis- 
tance ; yet all the 
sounds of wheels in 




BEESTG TINT ARCADIA 



the streets, the voices, the calls from 

animals and the barn-yard fowls, came to us as from a far 

country. 

It was pure delight on those Indian summer days which 
sometimes came in November, to saunter along over the 
soft brown mould, or over slopes russet-colored with the 
fallen needles of the pine, slippery to the feet, and soft as 
if one was walking on velvet. The only hint that flowers 
had ever been there was a group of blackened Indian 
pipes which we came upon now and then, forlorn wrecks 
of what had once been beautiful. 

But down on the outskirts — we should pass them — were 



i 5 8 



WILD FLOWERS. 




the last flowers of the year, witch hazel. "We should not 
pass them ; we should stop and gather theni ; linger long 

and inhale their fragrance : hear branches of them home. I 
own to a great fondness for this odd hush. I like its 
picturesque, original ways. It does everything after a plan, 
or a whim of its own. When not a leaf 
is left on the branches, it shows, all at the 
same time, the horny nuts, the buds for 
next years foliage, and flowers — 
sunny flowers all a-flutter. 

I have no faith 
in the traditions 
that a twig of it, 
used as divining- 
rod, will reveal a 
place where gold 
is hidden in the 
earth; but I am 
n : : so confident 
witch hazel. --- - « about the watex 

^HV tradition — that a 

twig held loosely in the hands of a man who is 

the riaht man. will turn over of itself when he comes 
where there is a spring down in the ground. 

We used to hear about such a man (there seemed to have 



WITCH HAZEL. 159 

been only one in the vicinity with this gift of uncanny 
craft), and I distinctly remember having seen him at his 
conjuring work, if I may call it so. He appears before 
my mental vision now, projected against the obscure back- 
ground of a very long time ago. He was walking slowly, 
in silence, his eyes cast down, with the rod of witch 
hazel (forked, I think) carried in front of him. He had 
been sent for by somebody who purposed digging a well, 
but did not know where he was sure of striking water. 

I do not know when it was, or where it was, or who 
the man was who wanted the well, or the name of him 
who bore the hazel rod. Neither do I know the result. 
But so much that I have told, one among a group of 
wondering children saw, and has never forgotten. 

The smell of the flowers delights me • perhaps it really 
bewitches ; perhaps there is sorcery in it, for the bush is 
mystic — an eerie thing. At any rate it is peculiar and 
distinctive. Nobody would ever mistake it, for it is like 
nothing else in the world; reminds one of nothing else. 
It is as individual as camphor, or ginger, or cloves, or 
sandal-wood. It is as penetrating as any of the strange, 
pungent gums and drugs of the Orient. The November air 
is fall of it at nightfall, and you feel it as you do 
dampness. 

The witch hazel flower is the last : the floral year, which 



i6o 



WILD FLOWERS. 



began with the morning flush of the arbutus, goes out in 
sunset color ; and 

" — in the season's saddest hour 

To skies that weep and winds that wail, 

Its glad surprisals never fail." 

When I perceive it on my late strolls, and see the "tawny 
gold," as Whittier calls it, of the lingering petals, I know 
what it all means. It means that the time of flowers is 
over; the procession has all passed by, there is nothing 
more to be seen. 




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